Pale Skin and Fragile Bone
by fakinbrilliance
Summary: Stiles asks Derek to teach him self-defense. This is a crazy adventure with lots of monsters, some angst, worrisome alpha instincts, and eventual romance. Stiles becomes a BAMF somewhere along the way. I started this story 4 years ago, and finally finished it, so it's wildly canon divergent at this point.


Stiles tasted blood as his chin hit concrete. He barely managed to flip himself onto his back before the solid weight of another body slammed down across his hips. Rough hands grabbed his wrists and pinned them to the floor.

 _Damn it._

Swallowing the bile rising at the back of his throat, Stiles bent his knees and kicked off the ground. His assailant grunted and slouched forward, the unexpected buck of Stiles' hips throwing off his center of gravity.

Stiles wrenched sideways, trying to unbalance the bastard even further, but his attacker had the reflexes of a bull rider and the muscle mass to back them up. The move brought one of the man's arms within range, though, so Stiles craned his head sideways and bit down hard.

A hot pulse of blood gushed into his mouth as the man snarled and jerked his arm back. Stiles held on tight, teeth grinding into the corded muscle of the man's forearm. A second, stronger yank nearly dislocated Stiles' jaw. Stiles braced himself for a third tug, but the guy suddenly switched tactics and slammed his arm forward instead.

Splashes of light sparked across Stiles' vision as the back of his skull connected with the solid ground. His jaw went slack – he couldn't help it – and suddenly both of the man's hands were around his throat.

Stiles tried to pry them off, tried to scratch, bruise, bite, kick, _scream_ – but the man's grip was tight enough to slow the oxygen flowing to his brain, and Stiles' limbs weren't listening anymore.

He fought to pull air in past the vise of the man's fingers. There was something he was supposed to do in this situation - knee balls or gouge eyes or…God, the lethargic thrum of constricted blood echoed inside his skull blotting out any hope he had of forming coherent thoughts.

Stiles blinked up at the pair of feral red eyes hovering inches above his face and knew it was over.

"You're dead," Derek snarled, fingers tightening on Stiles' throat. _"Again."_

Stiles wasn't sure what had made him ask Derek in the first place.

Maybe it was the fact that he'd been kidnapped for the fifth time in as many weeks, and had to wait around, yet again, for the cavalry to arrive. Maybe it was the seed of darkness, soaked in icy water and sacrifice, still growing around his heart like the tangled roots of a gnarled old tree. Or maybe it was some sort of PTSD, a faulty survival instinct triggered by the mingled horror and guilt of being possessed by the nogitsune.

Even with all that, asking an unstable alpha werewolf to teach him self-defense was probably as close to suicidal as it was possible to get without holding a loaded gun to his own head.

"You're not the Karate Kid, Stiles," Derek had snarled that first night when Stiles limped into his wreck of an apartment.

"And you're not some kindly old Japanese sensei. I get that," Stiles said, ducking under an exposed beam so that he could face the alpha properly. "It's just… I'm tired of being a message. Tired of being bait. _God._ I'm so fucking tired of not being able to breathe around the knot in my chest. I need to learn how to defend myself, Derek, and you're the scariest monster I have on speed dial."

There was a feral twist to Derek's lips as he said, "You have me on speed dial." He probably meant it as a question, but inflection had never really been his strong suit.

Stiles rolled his eyes. "That's really not the point."

"I already have enough pups to train," Derek said, turning away. "Ask Scott."

"Wait," Stiles protested, reaching out to grab Derek's shoulder before he could leave.

Derek froze at the contact, then turned his head with deliberate slowness, and glared at Stiles' hand.

"Sorry!" Stiles jerked his hand away. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. It's just…Scott can't do this. He'll hold back. He doesn't want to hurt me."

Derek's gaze shifted to Stiles' face, and the one eyebrow that Stiles could see rose. "And you think I do."

The words sounded heavy for some reason, loaded with a meaning Stiles couldn't parse. Derek's profile was unreadable.

"That's not what I…damn it, Derek, I just spent seven hours tied up in the trunk of a _Volvo_. Worse, I was captured by the incompetent drivers of a Volvo. I need to learn how to fight back, or at least how to run away better or something. If I can figure out how to avoid getting killed by you, then maybe I can avoid getting killed by other things, too."

He didn't mention the dark doors in his nightmares, or the suffocating memories of blood and death. He definitely didn't mention the fact that the only times he felt truly alive anymore were those brief spikes of fear and adrenaline when he and the pack were fighting, tooth and nail, to survive. Derek wouldn't understand. How could he? Stiles was living it and he had absolutely no idea what was going on.

"Come on, dude," Stiles pleaded. He hated the desperate note in his voice, hated the fact that he was begging Derek, of all people, for help. He didn't really have a choice, though. The Aderall wasn't cutting it anymore. Learning how to fight back was the only way he could think of to stay focused, to hold the darkness at bay. He tried to make his voice firmer as he demanded, "Show me how to fight."

Derek clenched his teeth, a muscle ticking in his jaw, and Stiles knew if he let the werewolf refuse again, he'd lose any chance of ever getting Derek's help to blind alpha stubbornness.

Stiles sighed. If logical arguments wouldn't work, maybe a demonstration would. Derek understood actions better than words anyway, right?

Stiles clenched his fingers into a fist, closed his eyes, and threw a clumsy punch.

Derek dodged and growled and, that quick, Stiles was flat on his back.

It took a full heartbeat for the pain to set in, for Stiles to register the fact that Derek had thrown him halfway across the fucking room, to realize the warm wetness he felt running down his side was blood leaking from a gash where bare rebar had torn across his ribs.

Derek was on him before the shock could dissipate, huge hands wrapped tight around Stiles' throat, fangs bared inches above Stiles' face.

"You're dead," Derek growled, voice thick with disgust. "We're done here."

He stood up and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

Stiles rolled onto his uninjured side and coughed. After several minutes of painful wheezing, he managed to push himself upright and stagger out to his jeep.

He should have given up then.

Derek was clearly unstable, damaged by loss and betrayal.

Stiles knew he was a killer. He'd watched Derek rip out Peter's throat with his claws, and sever Deucalion's spine with his teeth. The red in Derek's eyes was the stain of spilled blood.

Stiles could probably find some other way to hold the darkness at bay – meditation or magic or _something._ The possibility of death by mysterious monsters had to be preferable to the certainty of death by unhinged werewolf, right?

Any sane person would have turned tail and fled.

As soon as his bruises healed, Stiles returned.

Scott took one look at Stiles after that first night, inhaled sharply, eyes flashing red, and threatened to take Derek apart piece by piece.

It was a sweetly protective gesture, in a weird, homicidal sort of way, but no. Just. _No._

"You've got it all wrong," Stiles insisted, grabbing Scott's shoulder to stop him storming off to challenge Derek. "I threw myself at him!"

Scott spun back and blinked at him. "What?" he demanded, expression even more confused than usual, and Stiles mentally replayed what he'd said.

"What? No," he flailed a bit to deflect that mental image. "I meant Derek didn't attack me. I attacked _him_."

Scott only looked marginally less confused at that, so Stiles explained his whole super-awesome plan to make Derek train him to fight. It was that or watch Derek rip out Scott's spleen, and Stiles was just not that shitty of a friend.

Scott might be a True Alpha with all the physical prowess that went along with the flashing red eyes, but he didn't have Derek's experience or his ever-burning inner rage. Stiles really didn't want to be the one to tell Melissa McCall why her son was suddenly sashimi.

"Why don't you go to a dojo or something?" Scott asked. "Take a community college course on self defense."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Dude, do you really think a community college course is going to prepare me for the supernatural shit-shows around here?"

"Maybe?" Scott hedged, doubt clear in his voice. "It has to be better than Derek, though, right? Or, hey, maybe I could train you?"

"Seriously?" Stiles raised an incredulous eyebrow. "Scott, I love you man, but you are absolute shit at explaining things, and you have even less free time than I do." Stiles carefully didn't mention what he'd already told Derek – that Scott would hold back, pull punches, and feel guilty about every single bruise he left.

The last thing Stiles wanted was to be coddled.

"I still think this is a bad idea," Scott insisted, forehead creased with worry.

Stiles shrugged, the motion making the haphazardly bandaged cut on his side throb in protest. Scott probably wasn't wrong.

" _Shit,"_ Stiles cursed, getting his hands up just in time to avoid yet another headfirst collision. He grabbed hold of the cold, metal banister and slid, shaking and bruised, to the ground. At least it was the stairs he'd crashed into this time, and not the wall again. Variety was an important part of life, and the wall could probably a use a break. Stiles' head definitely could.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It came away red.

"Why are you still here?" Derek snapped, eyes crimson and voice sharp in the way that made most of the wolves in the pack go immediately belly up.

Fortunately, Stiles wasn't a wolf. He licked his cracked lips and spit out blood.

"Your charming company," he said with a crooked smile that pulled painfully at his torn skin. "Also you're teaching me how to fight."

"No," Derek insisted, "I'm not."

Stiles glared at him, pulling in air in greedy lungfuls.

Derek hadn't even broken a sweat. He'd barely moved since answering the door, still standing there, in the middle of his strangely empty apartment, as immobile as one of the ancient Grecian sculptures he so unfairly resembled.

Stiles shoved himself upright, ignoring his protesting muscles and the way his legs felt more like overcooked noodles than working limbs.

Derek sighed. "Go home, Stiles."

Stiles stubbornly rose to the balls of his feet, knees bent and hands raised in a close approximation of the street-fighting stances he'd seen on YouTube.

"No," he said, and charged.

Stiles knew it wasn't terribly bright to keep fighting against a man who beat him bloody every time. He didn't like the pain, didn't enjoy the bite of knuckles hitting flesh or the choking panic of the unyielding grip around his windpipe. He wasn't a masochist, no matter what it might look like. But there was definitely something addictive about throwing himself headlong into a fight.

Stiles knew he would lose. He harbored no delusions about overcoming an alpha werewolf singlehanded and weaponless, but there was a strange sort of relief in the knowledge that he was allowed to kick and bite and scratch and yell as much as he wanted to, as hard as he _needed_ to. He had absolutely no control over so many things in his life and, while the sparring sessions were a terrible, painful kind of chaos, something about the visceral struggle for survival loosened the constant knot in his chest just a little bit, let him breathe a little deeper for a few hours at least.

The fifth time Stiles showed up at the loft, bruises just fading to a sickly yellow green, the door was already wide open.

Stiles swallowed and fought back a twinge of panic.

Derek wasn't the type to leave his doors unlocked. In fact, Derek had three deadbolts, two chains, and a mountain ash crossbar that would lower into place to complete an ingenious supernatural barrier that Deaton had designed. Danny had rigged it so even a werewolf could activate the barrier with a numeric code and the push of a button, making Derek's loft a nearly impenetrable fortress against all the non-pack supernatural beasties out there.

In other words, Derek wasn't exactly the trusting type. That meant the open door was a very, very bad sign indeed.

Stiles listened to the absolute silence inside before knocking quietly on the door frame. The noise would be too low for any humans in the apartment to hear, but if Derek was inside, his wolf ears should pick it up.

Nothing.

Stiles sighed and pulled out his phone, tapping a quick message to Scott _– Derek's loft door open...break in? checkin it out –_ because if he managed to get himself killed, he at least needed Scott to know where to come to avenge him.

He probably should have waited until Scott replied, waited until a less breakable member of the pack arrived before going inside, but if Derek was in there and hurt badly enough that he couldn't reply, he needed help _now._

Stiles phone vibrated as he slipped it back into his pocket, but he ignored it and squared his shoulders, stepping quietly inside.

"Hello?" he whispered, hoping desperately that he wasn't about to find a body. The loft looked empty, all the furniture upright and untouched. There was no sign of a struggle that Stiles could see, but there was no sign of Derek, either.

Stiles took another hesitant step into the room.

A flash of movement behind him was all the warning he had before something large and solid slammed into his back.

"Shit!" Stiles cursed, flailing as he staggered forward. He tried to twist around and away, tried to gain his footing and make a run for it, but he was pulled up short by an arm slamming like an iron bar around his neck.

He felt a moment of blind panic before he was hauled bodily back into his assailant and collided with a startlingly familiar wall of solid muscle.

"You _ass,_ " Stiles croaked, trying not to examine the fact that he apparently knew Derek's chest by _feel._

"You _idiot_ ," Derek retorted, ever one for eloquent wordplay. "Don't walk into a dangerous situation without backup."

"You could have been hurt," Stiles wheezed, prying at Derek's arm and swinging his foot in a feeble attempt to kick Derek in the knee.

"And getting yourself killed would have helped me how?" Derek demanded, moving so Stiles' blow glanced harmlessly off his shin.

"Alright," Stiles gasped, still tugging at Derek's arm. "I get it. Next time I'll leave you to rot. God." He tilted his chin up, trying, without success, to open his airway a little further. "You can let go now."

"Make me," Derek growled, not giving an inch.

Stiles stilled, sweat beading on his forehead as he absorbed the challenge. It was the first time Derek had actively engaged him, the first time he'd done something other than deflect Stiles' blows and toss him aside like yesterday's garbage.

If Derek was giving him a chance to prove himself a worthwhile student, Stiles had to make it count.

He brought his left arm up, trying to hit Derek's face over his right shoulder. The angle was awkward, and the werewolf dodged easily, giving a little chuff of laughter that wasn't at all encouraging.

Stiles cursed, panting and squirming as he tried to figure out his next move. His first instinct was to go for Derek's groin, but in this position, that was all but impossible. His flailing feet hadn't had much effect and going for the eyes wouldn't work either since Derek was apparently able to keep his face pretty well out of punching range.

Suddenly, his racing thoughts snagged on a half-remembered bit of advice from one of the many YouTube self-defense tutorials he'd browsed over the last few weeks.

" _Your fists and feet are not your only options," the tiny woman on the screen had said, holding up petite, doll-like hands that looked more suited to tea parties than tae kwon do. "Your whole body can be a weapon if you know how to control it. Use your hips. Use your elbows. Use your head. Never underestimate the effectiveness of an unexpected blow." Then she'd demonstrated her point by taking down a man three times her size with a few unconventional strikes._

Stiles grinned a little crazily at the memory. He might not be a tiny superwoman, but he could definitely use his head.

With a snap, he whipped his skull backwards, smashing it straight into Derek's face.

Stiles winced at the impact, teeth clicking together, but the sharp intake of breath and slight, startled slackening of the arm around his neck told him it was worth it. He'd managed to take the werewolf by surprise.

Derek wouldn't stay startled for long, damn his supernatural reflexes, so Stiles acted as quickly as he could, swinging an elbow back hard to connect with Derek's stomach, trying to knock the wind out of him.

Instead of sinking in to his gut like Stiles had hoped, the blow hit the taught muscle over Derek's ribcage and bounced harmlessly off to the side.

Stiles cursed and brought his arm forward to try again.

"No," Derek snapped, grabbing Stiles' elbow mid-flail, "Like this." He shoved until Stiles shifted his hips sideways, then guided his elbow back to the vulnerable point on his own abdomen. "Hit here." He pushed Stiles' arm forward again, then pulled it back unerringly towards his own solar plexus.

Stiles froze, blinking the sweat out of his eyes so he could peer over his shoulder at Derek. Unless Stiles was hallucinating – not an impossibility considering the way Derek's headlock was preventing necessary oxygen from getting to his brain – Derek had just given him advice. Direction. Constructive criticism, even.

Stiles resisted the urge to pump a victory fist in the air, but only because both of his arms were occupied. Granted, five gruff words and some manhandling wouldn't usually be a reason to celebrate, but Derek Hale was actually _teaching_ him to fight! Clearly Stiles was a genius, and all his plans were golden.

"Does this mean you're going to stop randomly slamming me into walls to try to make me go away?" Stiles asked hopefully.

"Don't count on it," Derek deadpanned.

"Alright," Stiles nodded, "I can work with that," and he slammed his elbow back into the exact spot Derek had shown him.

The werewolf grunted, and the pressure against Stiles' windpipe eased momentarily.

"Not bad," Derek growled grudgingly, then wiped the smirk off Stiles' face by shoving him headfirst into the wall.

Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, when the night was silent and still in a way Stiles' thoughts never could be, he closed his eyes and imagined he could see tendrils of inky blackness snaking their way through his body – the dark seed of his sacrifice and the stain of the nogitsune twisting and writhing and strangling his heart.

Stiles didn't really know how Scott and Allison were dealing with the aftermath of their sacrifice. He'd asked them, of course, but they'd both shared a look and Scott had shrugged and said "I don't know, dude, I just try not to think about it," and Allison had smiled a little sadly before adding, "Being with Isaac helps." Words of advice that were about as useful to Stiles as a screen door on a submarine.

Deaton had been a little more helpful. He'd listened calmly to Stiles frantic list of questions before interrupting gently with, "There are no easy answers, Stiles. You were a willing sacrifice, and the Nemeton's darkness has taken root. If you feed it, if you give in to despair and sadness, the darkness will grow, and eventually your will to live will dissipate. But if you fight it, if you continue to value your life and the lives of others, you can hold the darkness at bay. You are strong enough to fight. You fought off the nogitsune. It may have scared you and scarred you, but when it mattered, you fought it and won." Then, because apparently Deaton couldn't help but be an enigmatic asshole, he'd smiled and added, "The path you've chosen to walk may stray into the shadows from time to time, but there is always a light inside guiding you, Stiles. You just have to follow it."

Deaton's words didn't really do anything for him though. There was still that fractured feeling inside, thoughts scattered like loose jigsaw pieces, and no matter what Stiles did, he couldn't find the edges that fit.

Maybe it would have been easier just to leave Beacon Hills. The heavy knot Stiles felt when he breathed, the constant, aching pressure against his ribs, and the feeling that the ground beneath him was crumbling might have eased with the distance. The pull of the Nemeton was strong, but could it reach another city? Could the memories of the nogitsune taint another state? If he ran far enough, put enough miles of mountains and valleys and oceans between, maybe he'd find a place where he could actually lead a normal life.

Dying might have seemed the easiest way out, simple and final and sure. But Stiles had seen too much of death to ever think it easy, and too many resurrections to ever think it final or sure.

It didn't really matter. Stiles would never be able to leave the continual supernatural crises in Beacon Hills. Not when Scott was still involved, not with Derek and rest of the pack depending on him. Leaving his dad alone wasn't an option, either.

So he sought out Derek day after day and trained. He landed punches and dodged kicks. He nursed sore muscles and sprained knees, and he finally learned how to take a fall.

Stiles had to survive.

He had to be hard.

He had to be _stone._

"Again," Derek growled, fingers clasped painfully tight around Stiles' wrist.

Stiles could feel his pulse thrumming against the pad of Derek's thumb, feel the sweat slicking his overheated skin, and he glared at Derek, panting hard. They'd been drilling for over two hours, and Stiles couldn't feel his feet. He wished he couldn't feel the rest of his body, either.

"You know," he quipped, trying to buy a little time for his screaming muscles to recover, "I usually wait until the first date before I let someone hold my hand."

Derek raised an eyebrow, grip tightening. "You've never been on a first date."

"Yeah, well I've never let someone hold my hand, either," Stiles shot back, then immediately winced when he actually heard what he'd said. "I mean, I _could_ have," he said, backpedaling frantically because the last thing he needed was Derek thinking he was even more of a sad sack loser, "Held hands. Or had a date. Or whatever. Because obviously I am awesome, and who wouldn't want a piece of this?" He gestured grandly with his free hand. "I'm just doing the world a favor by withholding this amazingness until I find the right person, because it would just be unfair to let someone get a taste of me and then–"

"Stiles," Derek growled, and Stiles' jaw clicked shut mid-word. " _Again._ "

"Right," Stiles nodded, ignoring the flush he could feel stealing its way across his cheekbones. He squared his shoulders and met Derek's eyes. "Ready."

It wasn't exactly easy to keep explaining away the bruises. Dad was in on the whole supernatural secret these days, but it didn't mean he was ok with seeing the evidence of violence pooling purple under Stiles' skin.

Stiles couldn't stand seeing the pained look on his dad's face; couldn't stop the gut-wrenching guilt it brought on, but he knew it would be even worse if he died because he was too weak to defend himself – if he left his dad completely alone.

His mom had fought to stay with them. She'd fought long and hard against the disease that waged war on her mind like an enemy inside her own skull.

Stiles had a enemies inside his skull now, too. The Nemeton's seed of darkness. The nogitsune's insidious stain. Stiles would be damned if he didn't fight just as hard.

"Sparring in a controlled environment can only take you so far," Derek said, calmly pinning Stiles with one hand.

Stiles twisted far enough that he could see Derek over his shoulder, cheek scraping against the exposed brick of the apartment wall. "You call this _controlled_?" he panted, trying to maneuver around to get in a good kick.

Derek raised an eyebrow and casually twisted Stiles' arm farther up behind his back.

Stiles yelped and squirmed.

"When you're here," Derek said, leaning in until his mouth was mere inches away from Stiles' ear, "You're expecting an attack."

Stiles could feel the heat of Derek's body pressing up against him, a sharp counterpoint to the cold brick of the wall. The whisper of Derek's breath along the nape of his neck stilled him more effectively than the armlock ever could.

 _Shit._

Stiles closed his eyes and tried to ignore the way small shivers raced up and down his spine every time Derek shifted behind him.

It was just the friction.

It _had_ to be.

Stiles was a teenage boy and, between the chimera attack on Monday and cramming for his physics midterm last night, it had been nearly _three days_ since he'd had any quality alone time.

Derek was ridiculously hot. It wasn't like Stiles had missed that memo. All of the werewolves were beautifully sculpted and absurdly built; it was enough to give a boy a complex, really. Still, it was one thing to appreciate the regularly scheduled shirtlessness (tune in at 9!), and quite another to feel his body reacting to the plane of hard muscle pressing up against his back.

"I've watched you," Derek said, and yeah, that whole husky thing his voice had going on was definitely not helping Stiles with his current sexual-identity crisis. "I've seen you at school, at lacrosse, at home. You let your guard down. If you want to survive, you _always_ have to be aware of your surroundings." Derek leaned in even further, until his lips brushed the shell of Stiles' ear. "You _always_ have to expect an attack."

Stiles jerked at the contact, then groaned as Derek twisted his arm into an even more uncomfortable position.

With a betrayed look down to his groin - clearly it was trying to get him killed – Stiles riffled frantically through his thoughts for something non-incriminating to say. He gave a pained laugh as he hazarded, "Constant vigilance?"

Derek snorted, and Stiles could practically feel him rolling his eyes. "Right," he said, "Ten points to Hufflepuff."

Despite his raging internal struggle, Stiles' brows drew down at that. "Hey," he glared, indignant, "I'm not a Hufflepuff. I'm _totally_ a– _ohmygod_ ," he gasped, all other thoughts wiped clean from his mind. "Are you a closet Potter fan?"

Derek only smirked, finally letting Stiles' arm drop as he stepped away.

"Be ready," he warned.

"Shit," Stiles muttered to himself as Derek turned and walked out of the room, leaving Stiles alone with his astonishment and the most confusing boner of his life.

With three AP courses, all the chores at home, and Coach Finstock's hellish lacrosse regime, Stiles already had a pretty full schedule for any normal high school teen. Add to that a regular stream of supernatural trespassers courtesy of the Nematon's magnetic pull, and the power-hungry packs of hunters circling Beacon Hills like sharks around a shipwreck, and Stiles doubted he'd ever have time to play Call of Duty again.

Not that he needed to anymore. He was getting plenty of real-life combat experience every day with Derek springing out of the shadows at him whenever he turned around.

After that horribly illuminating bit of self-discovery at Derek's apartment, Stiles was actually actively attempting to avoid the alpha. He didn't need any hyper-alert werewolf senses picking up any signals from his traitorous body, at least not before he understood them himself.

It had to be some form of cosmic irony that now that he'd finally decided _not_ to pester Beacon Hills' grumpiest werewolf on a regular basis, Derek had started stalking _him._

Over the last several weeks, Stiles had developed a healthy suspicion of any Derek-sized spaces in his house and at school. He'd started treating all doors and corners like they might be booby-trapped, edging towards them then springing past like if he was quick enough he could avoid an inevitable explosion.

Maybe someday it would actually work.

"Humans are predictable," Derek said, voice gruff as he pinned Stiles to the asphalt of the deserted school parking lot. It was past midnight, and anyone who drove by and saw them was going to have some very serious questions. "You react like prey."

"But I _am_ prey," Stiles wheezed. Derek was sitting on his back and had him in a headlock tight enough that his spine was painfully arched and his chest wasn't touching the ground. It was the least sexy straddle ever, but Stiles could still feel a flush coloring his cheekbones.

 _It's just hormones. It doesn't mean anything,_ he told himself firmly, and hoped Derek would attribute the redness to the lack of oxygen.

"You can't be prey if you're running with wolves," Derek insisted. "Do the unexpected."

"Unexpected?" Stiles choked out, tugging ineffectually at Derek's arm. Black sparks crowded in at the edges of his vision. How was he supposed to do something unexpected when he couldn't even move?

"Don't let yourself get pinned," Derek said, answering the question like he had read Stiles' mind.

"A little late now," Stiles gasped.

"It wouldn't be if you'd planned ahead." Derek growled, not giving an inch. "Don't just react. _Think_. Have something up your sleeve."

Stiles stilled at that, hands going momentarily slack around Derek's forearm as thoughts tumbled through his oxygen-deprived mind. He didn't have anything up his sleeve, but…

Stiles whipped his arm back, slipped his hand into his jeans pocket, and pulled out his car keys. Threading them between his fingers so the points stuck out of his fist like claws, Stiles raked his hand forward, digging the dull metal hard against Derek's exposed skin.

Derek grunted, and Stiles felt a wet welling of blood coat his fingers, slicking the keys in his hand, making them harder to hold onto.

"I'm a werewolf, Stiles," Derek growled. "You'll have to do better than scratch me." He held on for another long second to prove his point before standing up and letting Stiles' head thump down onto the asphalt. "Dead again," he said, though there was less condemnation in the words than usual.

Stiles rolled onto his back, greedily sucking in air as he blinked to clear his vision. Through the dancing sparks, he thought he caught the ghost of a smile on Derek's lips before the alpha turned and sauntered away.

It was nearly two weeks later when Scott slid into the empty seat beside Stiles at their school lunch table. For once, he wasn't staring at Kira. He was looking straight at Stiles, straight at the huge, purpling lump across Stiles' cheekbone, eyes pinched like they always were every time Stiles showed up with a new bruise. Scott knew perfectly well where this particular bruise came from, though, and it wasn't Derek's fault.

"Ok," Scott said.

Stiles raised an eyebrow. "Ok what?"

"I want in," Scott said, then, when Stiles just stared at him blankly, continued, "On your training. I want in. I want to help."

Stiles shook his head, which made the stiff muscles in his back and neck protest, but he ignored that in favor of leveling a look at Scott.

"We went over this," he said, trying to sound patient rather than exasperated. He knew Scott meant well, but Stiles was exhausted from spending half the night hogtied in a freezing warehouse, and he really wasn't in the mood to go over the same old argument. "Derek's training me. I'm not going to stop working with him." Not that he had a choice at this point, anyway. Derek was freaking everywhere, _all the time._

"I know," Scott admitted, which came as a bit of a surprise. Stiles had been expecting another protracted argument. Instead, Scott sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "You shouldn't stop training with Derek. Whatever you two are doing, it's working. I didn't like it at first, but I can see you're getting stronger. We all can. But obviously, that's not enough."

Stiles bristled.

"Not enough?" he demanded, incredulous. "You're the one who was telling me to step it down and take community college courses a month ago." He moved to stand up, not sure exactly where he was planning to go, but certain that this argument was going nowhere good.

"No, no," Scott said, waving frantically like he was trying to direct air traffic with his bare hands. "That's not what I meant." His brows had collapsed into the kicked puppy expression Stiles still hadn't developed a defense against, and Stiles sighed, hesitating long enough for Scott to finish explaining.

"You're training hard with Derek. Really hard. I know that. But you're training for an attack – for a _fight._ "

Stiles nodded. It was true. But wasn't that what self defense was supposed to be? Learning how to fight back?

"What happens when fighting isn't an option?" Scott asked. "Last night with the hunters, you and Isaac – god. If the hunters hadn't been so sloppy, and if Derek hadn't followed us there, all three of us could have been killed."

Stiles thought back to the previous night, to the quiet café where he, Scott, and Isaac had gone to grab an absolutely essential slice of late-night pie after the lacrosse game. He remembered the sharp pinprick of pain in his shoulder as they stepped out into the parking lot, remembered looking down to see the tiny dart pinning his t-shirt to his skin, then the sudden, inexplicable darkness.

He'd woken up with a massive headache in the corner of a warehouse, bound and gagged and just barely able to make out the dark silhouettes of Scott and Isaac's prone forms. Apparently whatever drug they'd used worked better on werewolves than humans.

Scott was right. The hunters had been sloppy. They'd left only one guard on duty, and the bastard had fallen asleep, but even then, tied up as he was, Stiles hadn't been able to do anything to free himself or his friends.

It had taken an agonizing three hours for Derek to track them down, break into the warehouse, and beat the lone guard bloody. He'd slashed Stiles free and hefted both still-unconscious werewolves over his freakishly strong shoulders just in time for them all to escape through a conveniently open window with the sound of approaching footsteps echoing through the empty warehouse. If the hunters hadn't been completely incompetent dickwads, or if Derek hadn't somehow realized what had happened and tracked them down, they'd probably still be tied up right now – or worse.

And Stiles was carefully not examining anything about that scenario. He wasn't wondering how Derek had known to follow their scents, or thinking about the giddy little flip his stomach had performed when Derek sprang through the warehouse window like an avenging were-ninja. Nope. He wasn't thinking about that at all.

"We were lucky," he said instead of anything more incriminating.

Scott nodded and looked at Stiles with his damnably effective earnest puppy dog eyes. "Yeah, we were. But what if we're not next time? We can't rely on luck, Stiles. We have to be ready for anything. That's why I want to help with your training."

Stiles nodded slowly, an idea forming in the back of his head. It would take repetition and precision. Derek wouldn't have the patience for it, but Scott might. If Scott really wanted to help…

"Ok," Stiles said. "Meet at your place at six tonight. I'll bring supplies."

"Tighter," Stiles demanded, flexing his wrists to test the rope's tension.

"Dude, it's going to cut off your circulation," Scott protested, looking down at Stiles already reddening hands. "You'll take your skin off trying to get out of it."

"Do you think the hunters are worried about my delicate skin?" Stiles asked, rolling his eyes. "Trust me, I've been tied up enough times to know how it feels when it's done right. This isn't right. It needs to be tighter."

Scott's eyebrows did a sort of concerned wiggle, but he sighed out a long breath and pulled the rope a little tighter before tying it off. He settled back on his haunches, eyeing Stiles speculatively.

Aside from the awkward way his limbs were bent behind him, Stiles was actually relatively comfortable. Usually, when he found himself hogtied like this, he was on hard cement or the prickly forest floor. It was a nice change to be on Scott's comfy mattress instead.

Stiles had Googled the hell out of escape techniques when he'd gotten home from school. He'd watched about a hundred YouTube videos of varying degrees of helpfulness before heading to Home Depot to pick up a couple lengths of solid rope, a few chains and some wood and bolts to use as anchors. All in all, he felt pretty well prepared.

He started wriggling, testing the bonds for weaknesses or any loops large enough that he could wrench his wrist through while Scott sat and watched, giving him pointers like, "Can you reach a little farther to your left?" and "Try the knot by your right ankle. It looks the loosest."

"Scott?" Melissa called, pushing open the door and poking her head into her son's room. "A letter came for you from grandm – Ah," She blinked, taking in the scene before her. "Stiles, honey, are you alright?"

Stiles buried his face in Scott's pillow and tried not to look like something from one of the bondage websites he'd happened across (accidentally!) in his many internet forays.

"Fine," he managed. "Practicing to become America's Next Top Escape Artist."

"Right," Melissa agreed, and Stiles was going to ignore any and all doubt he may have heard in her voice. The fact that Scott had immediately flushed bright red to his hairline probably didn't help their credibility any. "I'll just leave this here then," She said, and dropped the letter on Scott's desk before beating a hasty retreat.

Scott buried his face in his hands and groaned.

Stiles wished he could do the same.

On the whole, the training was paying off. Stiles could see it in the sharp lines of new muscle under his skin, feel it in the way he was able to outpace all his human teammates on the lacrosse field.

But with the pack, he still felt like second string.

"I'm just tired of being useless," he said with a sigh, using his free hand to hold two sturdy sticks in place as Allison wrapped a torn strip of fabric around them to splint his sprained wrist.

"You're not useless," Allison said immediately, soft brown eyes suddenly searching his face.

Stiles leaned his head back, staring at the smoldering hole in the branches above them, where the dragon's fiery breath had burned clean through the canopy of leaves.

"I know," he said, trying to sound more certain than he felt. "I guess I'm really just tired of always needing to be protected. Tired of being afraid."

"That was a dragon, Stiles," Allison said with a bit of a laugh. "I'm pretty sure we were all afraid."

Stiles smiled, and nodded gratefully when she finished knotting the splint.

"Thanks," he said, reaching down to pick up his backpack filled with herbs and books and a jug of holy water. It had all been utterly ineffective against the raging beast. Danny had used the holy water to put out a fire, though, so there was that, at least.

Stiles walked over to the massive, winged corpse. He leaned up against the trunk of one of the few undamaged pines as he gazed at the still, shadowed form. Even prostrate and broken, the dragon was a terrifying sight, surrounded by shattered trees, gouged earth and smoldering leaves – evidence of its power and rage. Large obsidian scales gleamed darkly in the moonlight, glowing with a radiance that belied the dead body they encased. Stiles glanced at the arrow shaft sticking out of the monster's eye and had to swallow as his stomach gave an uneasy twist.

His plan had gone to shit as soon as the dragon landed and bowled straight over the line of mountain ash Stiles had painstakingly laid out and baited earlier in the day. All his research had said the ring would hold the beast – hold anything supernatural, for a little while at least.

Apparently dragons followed their own set of rules.

It had taken a coordinated effort by all of the wolves to keep the thing grounded for the few seconds it took Lydia to work up a proper scream. The noise had startled the dragon in to stillness just long enough for Allison to aim and fire an arrow straight into the monster's eye.

All Stiles had managed to do was get trampled.

Derek stepped up beside him, standing a little closer than usual, eyes resting on the motionless corpse.

"What are we going to do with the body?" Stiles asked, turning to regard Derek's stoic profile. "Even with Isaac's backhoe, it's going to take a while to dig a hole that big."

"It'll burn on its own," Derek said softly. "There's a fire in dragons that even death can't kill."

Stiles turned back to look at the body, and realized Derek was right. The light in the glass-like scales was growing brighter, and as he watched, thin wisps of smoke seeped through the spaces between.

Derek reached out and ran his hand along the improvised splint on Stiles' wrist. "You were hurt."

Stiles winced, and cradled his arm against his chest. "It's nothing," he said quickly in response to the sudden frown creasing Derek's brow. "I'm fine."

After all the hours Derek had put into training him, he must have been disappointed that Stiles still couldn't keep himself out of trouble.

"Show me," Derek insisted, voice soft but firm. He stepped into Stiles' space, crowding him against the tree, giving him no room for escape.

It was almost endearing, the way he turned all overprotective-alpha whenever his pack was threatened. Derek pushed Stiles nearly to the breaking point when they trained together, but god help anyone else who gave him so much as a bruise.

If Derek noticed the way Stiles' body stilled or the traitorous hitch in his heartbeat, he didn't let on. Instead, he cupped Stiles' elbow gently with one hand and took his palm in the other, carefully rotating his wrist and watching for any sign of pain.

Stiles bit the inside of his cheek, but he couldn't suppress a sharp inhale as his arm throbbed, protesting the movement.

Derek nodded quietly to himself. "It's sprained, not broken," he said, and Stiles felt the familiar numbing prickle of pain leaving his arm, saw the telltale black streaks rushing under Derek's skin before the alpha released him and stepped reluctantly away.

Stiles swallowed, cradling his arm against his chest, trying to get his heartbeat back under control.

"So," he said to break the tension, "Not that I don't enjoy the regular exercise of running for my life, but this is starting to get a little out of hand."

Derek grunted, which Stiles decided to interpret as assent.

"Why aren't we attacking the root of the problem?"

Derek's eyebrows drew down. "We did." He glanced over at the dragon's body. "We killed it."

"Yeah, we killed the dragon, but that's not the actual problem. I mean, ok, it was a pretty big problem when it was breathing fire at us, but it was really just a symptom. Like the harpies last week and the chupacabra before that. It's the Nemeton that's drawing them all here and making Beacon Hills into a supernatural cesspit. There must be an off switch somewhere."

Derek shook his head. "We can't turn it off."

"Why not?" Stiles pressed. "We managed to turn it _on._ Why can't we just dig it up or burn the stump or something? There's gotta be some kind of ritual…"

"No." Derek's jaw was tight, voice sharp on the single syllable. "It can't be done."

"But someone cut it down before," Stiles insisted, "Someone managed to make it go dormant in the first place, right? It has to be possible."

Derek's shoulders had gone tense; everything about his body language suddenly defensive in a way that meant he was on the verge of storming off or slamming Stiles against a tree to avoid answering.

Instead, to Stiles' mild surprise, Derek drew one long, ragged breath in through his clenched teeth and looked up to meet Stiles' eyes. "The Order cut the tree down when my grandmother was a girl."

"The Order?" Stiles asked, trying not to sound too startled by how easily Derek was sharing information. "Who are they? Do you think they would come back here and work their mojo to turn it off again?"

A muscle in Derek's jaw ticked. "The Order of Silence," he elaborated, grudgingly. "They're basically the militant extremists of the Druid faith."

"What, like a whole group of Darach?" Stiles asked, suddenly wary.

Derek shook his head, eyes hard and mouth set in a thin line. "No. Not Darach." There was an edge to his voice, and Stiles wondered belatedly what terrible memories that word dredged up. "But they're just as bad. We don't want them here."

"But if they could fix the Nematon…" Stiles pressed.

"They killed half the pack before being driven off," Derek growled between clenched teeth, "and back then, the pack was thirty wolves strong."

"Shit," Stiles cursed, stomach dropping at the thought.

Talking to Derek about the past was like stumbling blindly through a minefield. Everything was potentially painful and explosive, and as much as it sucked for Stiles to occasionally stumble across those buried memories, how much more must it suck for Derek to live with them there, like bombs buried just under the surface of his consciousness all the time?

"Sorry," Stiles said at last, reaching out automatically to give Derek a comforting pat on the shoulder. He froze when his hand hit leather instead of the soft cotton of a t-shirt, suddenly remembering that this was Derek, not Scott, and that pats of brotherly affection were likely to lose him a limb.

He stood there for a second, arm awkwardly stiff, and stared helplessly at Derek's startled eyes. With a clenching sort of feeling somewhere in his gut, Stiles realized that he'd never seen anyone touch Derek casually. Actually, he'd never seen anyone touch Derek at all except to threaten his life or save it. And fuck if that wasn't the saddest thought Stiles had had all night.

" _Screw it,_ " Stiles muttered with a little shake of his head. Ignoring all his screaming self-preservation instincts, he gingerly picked up his hand and forced himself to pat Derek's ridiculously muscled shoulder again, and then again, and then once more. It got easier every time.

Slowly, very slowly, Derek's eyes lost their startled wideness, and after a long moment he let out a held breath and shrugged. "It happened before I was born," he said flatly, sliding his hands into his jacket pockets and shifting his gaze to the still form of the dragon.

Stiles had stopped patting Derek's shoulder, but he didn't move his hand. The reassuringly solid warmth of Derek's shoulder felt good, and Stiles could honestly use a little reassurance about now. It had been a long night.

After another short stretch of silence, Derek cleared his throat. "I heard what you told Allison earlier."

Stiles blinked, finally withdrawing his hand. He hadn't realized Derek had been anywhere near them, hadn't realized he'd been listening at all. He shrugged uncomfortably. "What?"

"You said you were tired of being useless. Tired of being afraid."

"Uh," Stiles hedged, feeling his cheeks go warm. "Yeah, it's nothing. I'd just like to be more useful, you know? I'd like to do something other than scream in terror when we inevitably get attacked."

"You _are_ useful," Derek's voice was quiet, almost too soft to hear. Stiles was about to argue when Derek continued. "The fear never really goes away. It doesn't matter how strong you are or how well you fight. There's always something to be afraid of. Someone to be afraid _for_."

Before Stiles could respond, the dragon's corpse blazed up, burning a bright white-gold that cast wild shadows around the quiet woods.

Derek turned and walked away, leaving Stiles alone in the dark, silhouetted by the flames of a dying myth.

Stiles was sprawled out on his bed, paging through a heavy tome on the myths and legends of ancient Persia while Derek slumped grumpily in his computer chair. They were supposed to be researching manticores, because apparently Beacon Hills had decided to give Sunnydale a run for its hell-mouth title or whatever the fuck, and now a huge human-bat-lion-scorpion- _thing_ was nesting in Mrs. Templeton's attic.

Instead the alpha was staring at him over the veritable wall of ancient books and old scrolls piled on his desk with an inscrutable expression.

"What?" Stiles demanded.

Stiles had spent a good three weeks agonizing over his newfound attraction to tall, dark, and broody, and had decided, for the sake of his own sanity, that ignoring it was the way to go.

Denial got a lot harder with Derek sitting _right fucking there_ , looking like he'd stepped straight out of a spread in GQ magazine in his casually rumpled Henley and artfully faded jeans.

"Chris Argent," Derek said, which was the absolute last thing Stiles expected to hear.

Stiles fought down the urge to babble wildly and waited a beat for Derek to finish his thought. "What?" He finally prompted again when the silence stretched too long. "Is he here? Did he call? Does he know something about the manticore? Is there some sort of Chris Argent related emergency I should be aware of?"

"No," Derek shook his head. "I meant you should train with him. With Chris Argent."

"What?" Stiles asked again, voice sharp. He could feel the jump in his own pulse; knew Derek could hear it, could hear the way his breathing had gone shallow and quick. "No. You hate Chris Argent."

"I don't hate him," Derek said, which was a blatant lie. "I don't _like_ him, but he's helped us since the alpha pack disbanded. He could help you," Derek insisted, continuing even though Stiles was shaking his head in quick, abortive little movements. "You need weapons training."

"So train me," Stiles said, swallowing the bile he could taste at the back of his tongue.

"I can't," Derek's voice was calm, but there was something hard in his eyes that told Stiles he didn't want to admit that. "I'm a werewolf, Stiles. I fight with teeth and claws. I don't use guns or crossbows or swords. That's how humans fight. Chris Argent can teach you those skills."

"No," Stiles said again. "I won't learn from hunters."

"You're strong," Derek argued. "You're getting stronger, but you'll never be able to match a werewolf for strength and speed. You have to fight like a human, like a hunter if you want to take us down."

 _But I don't want to take you down_ , Stiles thought desperately. He didn't say it aloud, knew it was a weakness Derek wouldn't tolerate, so he tried another tack.

"Do you…" Stiles stopped, swallowed and took a deep breath. "Do you have any idea what happened to me in his basement?"

Derek growled so low Stiles almost didn't catch it, but the sudden flash of red in his eyes and the angry twist of his lips were enough to convince Stiles of what he'd heard.

"Gerard beat you."

"Yeah, he beat me." Stiles nodded, hyperaware of Derek's eyes on him. "He hit me and cut me and used me to deliver a message. But you know what? That wasn't the worst of it."

"What?" The alpha's voice was low and dangerous, his whole attention focused on Stiles' words.

"Do you have any idea what scares me the most in this world?" Stiles asked instead of answering. He pushed himself to his feet so he could pace along his bedroom wall. He could feel Derek's gaze on him, knew the alpha was just as tense as he was. "It's not the monsters. It's not the demons or the dragons or the undead. Yeah, those are all scary as fuck, but they're not what keeps me up at night."

Derek watched him as he paced, following Stiles' jerky movements with unreadable eyes.

Stiles bit his lip, trying to hold in the anguished admission as it bubbled up in his throat, threatening to spill out.

"What is it then?" Derek asked in a deceptively quiet voice.

It felt like a dam had broken; the words flowed out of him, fierce and fast and unstoppable.

"I'm afraid of being helpless, Derek. I'm afraid of being useless, of watching the people I care about suffer and die. When my mom got sick – " he took a deep, steadying breath. "I tried to help. I did all my chores. Made dinner, washed the dishes, cleaned the laundry, anything I could. I thought that maybe if I was good enough, maybe if she had the chance to rest, she'd get better. But she had dementia," His voice broke over the word, but he pressed on, ignoring the way his vision had started to blur at the edges. "There was nothing I could do. I had to watch her die, day after day. I had to watch her pain, watch her tears, watch as her death almost killed my dad, too. It's the worst feeling in the world, that helplessness - knowing that you're not enough."

Stiles stopped pacing and turned to face Derek. He was staring at Stiles with an unwavering gaze, eyes fixed on Stiles' face, mouth a tight, hard line. There was no pity in his expression; no overdramatic sympathy. But there was _understanding_ and that made it easier than it should have been to continue.

"And then with the nogitsune – god. I was a prisoner in my own mind. I couldn't do anything as it used my body to destroy everything I cared about." He was shaking now, teeth chattering as his body reacted to the memory of stress by dumping a shit ton of unhelpful adrenaline into his system.

"And that was awful, but it was a demon born from a desire for vengeance, so what can you expect?" He shrugged and laughed, the sound brittle in his own ears.

Derek was leaning forward, shoulders tense, like he was fighting the urge to move towards Stiles. Stiles held up a hand to stall him, closed his eyes and swallowed. He took a steadying breath through his nose, opened his eyes and forced himself to go on.

"Diseases and demons are _supposed_ to try to kill us, but Gerard was human. He didn't have any excuses. He was an old man, a _grandfather_ \- someone we should have been able to trust."

"He was a twisted son of a bitch," Derek spat with venom in his tone that Stiles wholeheartedly approved of.

"Yeah, he was. He beat me. He threatened my friends and family, and then he tied me up and made me watch as he tortured Boyd and Erica. I was right there. I was right there, and I couldn't do anything. I was in the room, hearing them scream, watching their faces twist and their blood spill and there was nothing, _nothing_ I could do." His breath came out in a shaky exhale and he ran a palm over his face, trying to erase the images burning behind his eyelids, wishing he could wipe the memories from his mind.

"That was Gerard," Derek said quietly after a long, silent minute. "And he's dead. Chris killed him. And Chris is on our side now, against the other hunters. You know that."

Stiles nodded. "Oh, trust me, I'm glad he's on our side, now. He and Allison both. But that doesn't change the fact that it happened in his house, in his basement. I don't know if he knew. I don't know if it would change things if he did. But I do know I don't want anything to do with _hunter_ training."

Derek continued to stare at Stiles, unblinking, for a long moment before he finally exhaled.

"Ok," he said, nodding slowly. He turned back to the unfurled scroll on the desk, finally looking away. As far as acknowledgement went, it wasn't much, but at least Derek probably wouldn't bring up the topic again.

Stiles walked shakily back to his bed and sat down.

A part of him was surprised that the memories he'd just recounted hadn't triggered a full-blown panic attack. Sure, his heartbeat had picked up, and he'd started shaking, but he hadn't been out of control, and now that they'd stopped talking about it, his breathing had evened out again. When was the last time he'd actually had an attack? Stiles thought about it. Not for months now. Not since he'd started training with Derek.

Surely that had to mean something.

Stiles wasn't sure that he wanted to know what.

He hunched over his open book like he could use the pages as a shield against the rest of the world. He was already halfway through the next chapter, reading about the destructive spirit Angra Mainyu as the knots in his shoulders finally started to relax, when Derek spoke again.

His voice was soft, muttered into the stillness like a promise that Stiles wasn't sure he was meant to hear:

"I'll just have to find a way to give you claws."

"Stiles!" Danny yelled as Stiles threw himself sideways, dodging the manticore's slashing tail. "Catch!"

Stiles rolled as he hit the ground, and righted himself just in time to snag the small corked bottle that Danny had tossed at him from across the deserted library parking lot. He yanked the cork out with his teeth and spun, cursing as a bright knot of pain bloomed in his left shoulder. He'd been still too long. The scorpion-like sting had found its mark, and a tingling numbness was already spreading through his veins, creeping down his arm and across his chest with each beat of his heart.

Stiles didn't have time to worry about that. Most of the pack had already been downed by that dangerously accurate tail. Only he, Danny, Allison, and Lydia were still upright, as they'd stayed out of the initial fray. So far, all the pack's weapons, teeth, and claws had proved completely ineffective against the monster's enchanted hide.

Stiles was holding their last bottle of hellebore-laced holy water, the only thing that might actually stop the massive beast. If he didn't end this now, they'd all be dead before dinner.

With an inarticulate yell, Stiles launched himself forward, ducking another jab from that blasted stinger and coming dangerously close to both the deadly claws and slick, yellowish fangs.

The creature reared back its lion-like head to roar, clearly convinced of its victory over the tiny, fragile human before it, and Stiles lobbed the open bottle straight into its gaping mouth.

There was a moment of stillness, then the manticore's eyes went wild and wide. Its body gave one giant shuddering spasm, and it choked out a sickly, grayish foam, muzzle dripping like a rabid dog's.

"Yes!" Stiles crowed as he flung himself away from the slavering beast. Unfortunately, he wasn't quite fast enough to avoid the last thrashing swipe of the dying monster's paw. The razor-edged claws caught on the fabric of Stiles' shirt and tore, missing his skin by mere millimeters.

"Aw, man," Stiles said, staggering back from the floundering monster. He plucked forlornly at the sad shreds of fabric hanging in limp tatters from his shoulders. "This was my favorite shirt," he complained as the manticore gave one more huge spasm and curled in on itself.

"Stiles!" Danny called, sprinting to his side as Stiles slumped down on the asphalt, an odd feeling of cold numbness bleeding into his legs.

"Seriously," Stiles slurred, struggling to meet Danny's gaze. The world kept slipping in and out of focus for some reason, and Danny's face had gone all wobbly around the edges. "I love this shirt."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Stop bitching about your shirt and drink this," he demanded, propping Stiles up as his muscles suddenly gave out.

Danny pressed a plastic bottle of thick, purplish liquid to Stiles' lips. The antivenom Deaton had brewed up tasted vaguely of honey and lilac, and it coated his tongue like warm syrup. Stiles swallowed thickly, feeling a tight knot of warmth settling in his belly.

Slowly, the world solidified, and Stiles blinked, trying to clear his head.

"Better?" Danny asked.

Stiles nodded shakily. "Yeah." He tried to sit up, but his muscles still felt like overstretched rubber, so he let himself sink back against Danny for support. At least he could feel all of his limbs again. "How are the others?"

"They're coming around," Danny said, shooting a glance across the parking lot at the other feebly stirring forms. "Allison and Lydia are helping them."

"And the manticore?" Stiles asked, trying to crane his neck around to see over his shoulder.

"Looks pretty dead," Danny said with a half smile. "That was some seriously nice footwork, Stilinski."

Stiles laughed, and ran a shaking hand through his hair. "Thanks."

" _Stiles._ "

"Werewolf healing is so not fair," Stiles grumbled, shuffling around to face the owner of the angry voice.

By all rights Derek should have still been down for the count considering the number of stings he'd taken and the amount of time the venom had been in his system. Instead, he was storming towards them like a veritable hurricane of gloom.

"What the fuck was that?" Derek demanded, glowering down at them.

"You're welcome," Stiles said, as cheerfully as he could.

"Why the hell would I thank you?" Derek snarled.

"Oh, I don't know," Stiles pushed himself up into a proper sitting position, ignoring the weakness in his limbs. He'd be damned if he was going to take Derek's abuse lying down. "Because I saved your fuzzy asses?"

"You nearly got yourself _killed_ ," Derek growled, eyes flashing red.

Stiles swallowed hard. He'd actually let himself believe that Derek had started to see him as more a fragile human he had to protect. It felt like a kick in the gut to discover Derek apparently still thought of him as nothing more than the weakest link.

"What choice did I have?" he demanded, focusing on how utterly ridiculous Derek was being instead of anything else. "If I'd run away, the manticore would have _eaten you_. How did you even see what happened, anyways? I thought you were unconscious."

"The venom's paralytic. I couldn't move, but I could still see everything that was going on," Derek's voice sounded less angry now, and more exasperated. "You ran straight at it."

"You're the one who's always telling me not to think like prey, to do the unexpected." Stiles glared. "It was a calculated risk."

"Calculated?" Derek snapped. "You must be damned bad at math. There's a difference between 'unexpected' and 'suicidal,' Stiles. That was just plain stupid."

"It worked, though, right?" Stiles gestured towards the very still pile of dead manticore decorating the asphalt a few feet away. "We won. Game over. Stop raining on my parade and be happy we made it out alive, Sourwolf."

Derek sighed, shoulders slumping, eyebrows carving an even deeper furrow into his brow. "Yeah," he said finally, like the word had been dragged out of him. "We won."

Stiles huffed and rolled his eyes. "Help me up," he said, and held out a hand. He'd meant for Danny to take it, since he'd been helping already, but Derek stepped forward instead and grasped Stiles' palm, pulling him easily to his feet.

"Let me see your shoulder," Derek demanded as soon as Stiles was upright. He gestured to the bloody hole in Stiles' completely shredded shirt where the manticore's stinger had hit him.

"It's fine," Stiles said, but he pulled his shirt up and over his head anyways, knowing Derek wouldn't be satisfied until he inspected the wound for himself. And really, how had Stiles let himself mistake these gestures for anything other than alpha-overprotectiveness?

"Wow, Stilinski," Danny said, and Stiles turned and towards him, confused by the startled sound of the other boy's voice. Danny was staring at his chest, and Stiles looked down, wondering if the wound was worse than he'd thought.

It didn't look that bad, just a narrow puncture that wasn't even really bleeding any more. It could probably use a few stitches, and he might need a tetanus shot, but he'd done worse to himself while gardening. Pruning shears were dangerous and should never be trusted.

Clearly Derek agreed with Stiles' damage assessment. He ran his fingers over the unmarked skin next to the cut and said, "Melissa can look at it when we get back to Scott's, but it looks clean."

Danny was still staring at Stiles though.

"What?" Stiles asked, confused.

Danny raised his eyebrows significantly. "When did you grow a six pack?"

"Dude," Stiles laughed, looking down at his stomach in surprise. "You've had lacrosse with me every day, and you're just now noticing?"

Training with Derek really was doing him good. He was still lanky, and would probably never have the kind of bulky muscle most of the werewolves seemed to put on as a matter of course, but the past several months of near continuous running and sparring had burned away any excess fat on his frame and replaced it with long, lean muscle. He'd noticed the change early on, but hadn't really thought much about it. He'd been a bit too busy with running for his life and dodging murderous mystical beings to stand in front of the mirror.

"Yeah," Danny agreed, "But you usually wear three hundred layers. I don't think I've ever actually seen you shirtless."

"Huh," Stiles said. "Weird."

"Here," Derek interrupted brusquely, shoving his leather jacket under Stiles' nose.

"Uh," Stiles stared at it, confused. "What?"

"Your shirt's ruined," Derek said, like that was any kind of explanation. When Stiles still didn't move, Derek growled, "Put it on."

Stiles wanted to protest. Every other guy in the pack wandered around like they had a terminal t-shirt allergy and no one ever said anything to _them_. Still, he was actually a little cold, and it was kind of a nice gesture, even if Derek's phrasing could use a little work.

 _Not that it means anything,_ he told himself sternly. Werewolves ran hot, so Derek didn't need the extra layer.

Stiles snagged the jacket and shrugged it on.

"Thanks," he said awkwardly, and tried to ignore soft uptick at the corner of Derek's mouth.

 _It doesn't mean anything,_ he told himself again, but, in spite of everything, he couldn't help wishing that it did.

"I had an interesting conversation with Derek Hale today," Dad said, and Stiles nearly dropped his dinner.

"Oh?" He asked, adjusting his grip on his plate of Hamburger Helper and trying to sound casual. Things had been different after the big supernatural reveal. Easier, since Stiles didn't have to lie. Harder, because sometimes Stiles caught a look of helpless worry in his dad's eyes and knew it was justified.

"Yeah," Dad nodded, spearing a fork full of noodles and sauce and glancing up to meet Stiles' gaze. "Ran into him at the supermarket. I don't see him there too often."

Stiles shrugged noncommittally. "He probably avoids you. You did arrest him that one time."

"On your word, son," his dad reminded him, and Stiles felt the old stab of guilt twist a little in his gut.

Stiles shrugged again, this time uncomfortably. "We all make mistakes."

Dad nodded, speared a few more noodles and forked them into his mouth.

Stiles sat down gingerly. He was pretty sure conversations between his dad and Derek could lead nowhere good, especially not when the sheriff still said "Derek Hale" in the tone of voice he usually reserved for phrases like "murder suspect." His dad continued to eat quietly, though, methodically forking beef and pasta into his mouth and Stiles finally started to relax.

"Derek said he's been training you in self-defense," Dad said after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

"Uh," Stiles froze, fork halfway to his mouth, "Yeah. Sort of. It's a thing he does for all of us? For everyone in the pack."

The sheriff nodded, chewed, swallowed. "I talked to Melissa this morning, too. She said Scott's been helping you with a… _project_ of some sort."

Stiles choked on a noodle, grabbed his water, and chugged it. He hoped his dad thought the redness in his cheeks was from the coughing. "Ah, yeah. Yeah, he has been," Stiles hedged, thinking back to their last practice session three days ago when he'd managed to slip out of four of the five knots Scott had tied. "But I think we're nearly done with that, now. Just working out the kinks." He winced a little at his own word choice, but thankfully dad didn't seem to notice anything.

"Great," Dad smiled. "So you'll have time to come down to the range with me today then."

Stiles blinked. "The range?"

"The shooting range," Dad explained. "You remember it, right? You've been there before."

Stiles nodded. He'd gone as a kid on one of those take your son to work days. An officer had given a long safety spiel, and Stiles had donned sound canceling headphones, and he'd still nearly put his own eye out with his elbow flailing in surprise at the sound of the first shot.

"Uh, thanks?" Stiles hedged, not quite meeting his dad's eye. "But I'm not sure I should be trusted with projectile weapons. I almost took Scott's head off with a crossbow bolt once. I really don't think I should be firing a gun."

"Werewolves don't use bullets," the sheriff said in a completely reasonable voice, "But I do, and so do the hunters who come after your pack. Even if you're not planning on using a gun yourself, learning to disarm and neutralize an opponent is a good idea."

"Right." Stiles swallowed hard and tried not to feel like a hunted animal.

"I know you think you have to protect me," Dad said, voice low and steady, "And it's true that you know more about werewolves and monsters than I do, but not all of your enemies are supernatural. Learning a few tricks from your old man can't hurt."

Stiles stifled a sigh and plucked up a smile. "Sure, Dad. Sounds great."

Stiles flopped down on his bed, completely drained. In addition to four slightly terrifying and very noisy hours at the range, Stiles had been through nearly three hundred pages of world history notes and seven chapters of Lydia's translation of the bestiary. He was fairly convinced his eyes and ears would never be the same again. Some day, he was going to take a vacation. A massive, midterm and supernatural-free vacation, and it would be pure bliss.

He flipped the switch on his bedside lamp and sighed, reveling in the peaceful, quiet darkness.

A soft, insistent tap sounded at his window.

Stiles groaned inarticulately. He flailed at his lamp until the light clicked back on, then groaned again with even more feeling.

Derek loomed in the darkness outside like the creepy creeper he was.

"Really?" Stiles asked the room at large. "Right now?" His head was aching, he could barely see straight, and he honestly just wanted to fall sleep. He really did not need the added complication of all the tangled emotions Derek dredged up in him.

And maybe that wasn't exactly fair. It wasn't Derek's fault that he was stupidly attractive, and he definitely hadn't done anything to encourage Stiles' ridiculous crush. Non-crush. Whatever.

Derek tapped again, eyebrow raised, and eyes flicking impatiently towards the window catch.

With a groan, Stiles shoved himself upright, unlatching the window before Derek got tired of waiting and broke it open.

"You are in so much trouble," he said as soon as he stepped back from the window, to let Derek in. "I was at the shooting range with my dad for _four hours_ today."

Derek shrugged. "You said you didn't want to learn from hunters," he said, completely unapologetic. Then he shoved a box at Stiles like he wasn't sure if he wanted to hand it to him or hit him with it. "Here."

"Uh," Stiles started, taking a wary step back. He eyed the package dubiously. It was small, about the length and width of a smart phone, but thicker by a little more than an inch. It rattled suspiciously whenever Derek moved. "Is that some kind of tiny monster you've managed to capture or something? I mean, I'm happy to research how to kill it if you're not sure, but I don't think I'm quite equipped to babysit it in the meantime."

"It's not a monster," Derek said, the ever-present frown-line between his brows deepening ominously. "It's a birthday present."

"Oh," Stiles said, blinking. He glanced over at his clock. 12:01 a.m. Huh. He'd been eighteen for a whole minute without realizing it. "Cool, dude. You didn't have to." He just barely stopped himself from adding "Why didn't you wait till the barbeque tonight to give it to me like a normal person?" because that sounded a bit ungrateful.

Derek was looking more and more tempted to use the box as a weapon the longer that Stiles left him holding it. It might look small and unassuming, but Stiles knew that Derek was stupidly strong and had the kind of pinpoint accuracy major league pitchers would kill for. He'd seen him peg Isaac in the forehead with a fast-food ketchup packet at fifty feet. That box was substantially bigger than a ketchup packet, and it looked a hell of a lot more solid.

Self preservation instincts kicked in, and Stiles gingerly accepted the package. It jangled worryingly.

"Thanks?" He smiled hesitantly. "This isn't going to kill me, is it?"

"Open it," Derek growled, ever the spirit of generosity and good cheer.

"Right, fine. Opening it." Stiles slid the lid off carefully, and peered inside. "A key ring?" he asked, blinking down at the small jumble of metal and plastic in confusion. "With keys?"

He had the wild, horrific thought that Derek had bought him some kind of car or truck or motorcycle, something to replace his jeep, but that was completely ridiculous. Derek didn't have any money. He drove his sister's fancy car and shared his wreck of a flat with two of his betas to afford the rent. Plus, he knew how much Stiles loved his jeep. Not to mention the fact that there was absolutely no reason for Derek to buy him _anything_ on his birthday, Stiles reminded himself, let alone a _car_.

"They're not keys," Derek said, looking...smug? "Take them out."

Stiles did, hooking a finger through the black suede lanyard attached to the strangely oblong key ring. Three keys dangled from the ring. They were thick and heavy, like the keys of modern cars with computer chips embedded in their base.

Stiles narrowed his eyes. "They look like keys to me."

"That's the point," Derek said, then reached out and took Stiles' hand.

Stiles' heart jumped at the contact. He stared at their hands, unsure what was happening until Derek took the dangling keys and slotted them between Stiles' fingers, points outward, exactly the same way Stiles had held his own keys that night in the school parking lot months ago.

"They're a weapon?" Stiles asked, heartbeat kicking up another notch.

Derek nodded, wrapping the soft suede of the lanyard over Stiles' knuckles like a poor man's boxing glove and looping the end over his thumb to anchor it. He closed Stiles fingers into a fist around the oblong key ring. It felt comfortable, like it was made to fit his hand.

"Squeeze your fingers together," Derek instructed.

Stiles complied, tightening his fist so his fingers pressed hard against the heads of the keys. He heard several soft clicks, and suddenly the metal lengths of all three keys split, retracting back into their bases, revealing thin silvery blades that shined bright in the muted light of Stiles' reading lamp.

Each blade was barely two inches long and less than a centimeter wide, but they were sharp enough that when Stiles pressed a finger to the edge of one, blood welled immediately. There was something strange about the way the blades reflected the low light in the room, glowing a little brighter than metal should, and Stiles skin tingled in response to the feel of old power.

"Where did you get these?" Stiles asked, unable to keep the reverence out of his voice. He knew what he was holding were no ordinary knives.

"I had the keys and the lanyard specially made," Derek answered gruffly. "Werewolves don't use weapons often, but my family knew a smith down in Mexico who would make special orders for a price. The blades are dragon bone."

"What?" Stiles asked, startled. "But dragons burn when they die."

Derek nodded. "Most of the body does, but sometimes there are small shards of bone left over. They're rare, and prized as weapons – usually arrowheads because the fragments are so small. They're nearly unbreakable, and once they're sharpened, they never lose their edge. They're also one of the few materials that can fatally injure supernatural beings."

Stiles swallowed. "Thank you," he said, trying to ignore the rapid beating of his heart. Derek was still touching him, fingers warmer against the skin of his wrist than they had any right to be.

Derek held his gaze for a long moment before he finally looked away. "Keep them on you from now on," he ordered, finally breaking contact and stepping away. "We'll start training with them tomorrow." He slipped back out the window and into the night.

"What are we watching tonight?" Allison asked, popping the tab on her root beer as she settled onto the couch between Kira and Lydia.

Stiles waved a blue and gold DVD box in the air. "The Holy Grail," he answered with a grin, sliding the disk in.

Jackson groaned. "Again?" he demanded. "We just watched that a month ago."

"Which means we are seriously overdue," Scott chimed in from Kira's other side, blatantly ignoring Jackson's put-upon expression.

It was a Saturday night three weeks after Stiles' epic birthday bonanza, and for once, there were no imminent supernatural crises going on, which meant it was Pack Movie Night at the Stilinski place.

Stiles wasn't sure exactly how it had become a tradition. Scott's house had a bigger TV, and Derek's loft came with the bonus of no parental supervision, but apparently, despite their working alliance, the alphas' territorial instincts made their home turfs a no-go for casual get-togethers.

According to Scott, the Stilinski household was the Switzerland of Beacon Hills, which meant everyone could come in and relax and no one had to have a pissing contest over the popcorn. It also meant that several times a month, Stiles suffered through the painful privilege of playing host to four werewolves, two humans, a kitsune and a banshee, plus the occasional parental units who decided to crash the party.

It got a little cramped with the entire pack draped all over his living room. With only two beat up sofas and his dad's well-worn recliner, it wasn't exactly the lap of luxury. Fortunately, while it was true that the werewolves tended to sprawl like it was an Olympic sport, they also had no concept of personal space, so it was easy enough to fit four people on each couch in inelegant but cozy puddles of elbows and knees.

Stiles snagged the remote and managed to claim himself some couch space between Isaac and Jackson with only a little bit of elbowing.

"Ready?" he asked, finger hovering over the play button.

"Derek isn't here," Isaac pointed out, glancing at the recliner like he was checking to see if Derek had materialized in his usual seat without anyone noticing. Considering Derek's unfortunate addiction to lurking, Stiles had to admit it was entirely possible.

The recliner was still vacant, though, no Derek in sight.

Stiles tried to ignore the vague pang of unease he felt at Derek's absence. He wasn't worried. That would be silly. Derek had probably just gotten caught up in one of his epic, physics defying workouts and lost track of the time. There was no way he was battling evil witches or having his spleen eaten out by giant mutant bugs. Probably.

Stiles shrugged, trying to work some of the tension out of his shoulders. "His loss," he decided. "He knew when this shindig started."

"Shindig?" Danny repeated with a raised eyebrow.

"Admit it," Stiles gestured grandly to himself, "You wish you were this cool."

Danny reached behind Jackson to cuff Stiles upside the head, and everyone was laughing by the time Stiles finally hit play.

They were halfway through the opening credits, Scott, Kira, Isaac, and Stiles reading "A møøse once bit my sister…" in horrible Swedish accents, when Derek walked through the door.

Stiles tried not to notice the way the tension in his shoulders suddenly eased at seeing Derek, spleen still firmly intact, standing silhouetted in his doorway. He plastered on a his party-host smile as most of the pack chorused greetings at one of their alphas. Scott and Kira kept quoting, "No Reali! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush..." but Stiles couldn't exactly fault them for that.

"Hey," Derek answered, setting a shopping bag full of chips and sugary snacks on the coffee table.

"Caught in the checkout line?" Isaac asked sympathetically.

Stiles' smile turned genuine at Derek's nod.

Feeding everyone in the pack would have put a serious dent in his wallet, so he'd included kale in every dish he'd served the first two movie nights. By the third, all the wolves had brought their own deliciously unhealthy snacks to share. Stiles should really start a 'How to Train Your Werewolves' blog. Surely there were some other hapless pack humans out there that would benefit from his vast knowledge and experience.

Derek wandered out of the room, presumably in search of a drink, and Stiles turned back to the TV, in time to see Bo Benn get credit for teaching the 'Large møøse on the left hand side of the screen' Latin, French, and "O" Level Geography. Monty Python was seriously the best.

The frenetic end of the opening credits was flashing in painful, llama-filled brilliance across the screen when Isaac suddenly tensed and looked over his shoulder. Instinct made Stiles tense, too, and he almost spilled his popcorn when he caught sight of a hulking form lurking directly behind them.

"Damn it, Derek," he cursed, clutching at the popcorn bowl like a Victorian maiden clutching a bed sheet. "One of these days I am seriously going to put a bell on you. Make some noise when you move, dude."

Derek just rolled his eyes, and continued looming like the world's most obvious spy.

Isaac glanced between Stiles and Derek, a pin-scratch line forming between his perfect brows. "I…" His eyes flicked back and forth again, and he pushed himself off the couch in an abrupt movement. "I'm just going to go to the bathroom," he said to no one in particular, and high tailed it out of the room.

Stiles watched him go, completely nonplussed, and then flailed and actually did lose his grip on his popcorn bowl when the couch cushion beside him sank down unexpectedly.

Derek's hand shot out and steadied the bowl before Stiles could send it flying, then he grabbed a handful of kernels and tossed a few in his mouth.

"Seriously! Noise! Make it or I bell you," Stiles hissed, trying to get his heartbeat back under control. He frowned as Derek munched on his stolen handful of popcorn.

"Constant vigilance," Derek smirked.

Stiles rolled his eyes and snatched the bowl back. "Ten points from Slytherin," he grumbled.

Derek huffed a laugh and stole another handful of popcorn.

"Isaac was sitting there," Stiles pointed out, as though Derek could possibly have failed to notice.

Derek looked supremely unconcerned. "He can have the recliner," he announced, as though he hadn't jealously guarded the La-Z-Boy like a dog with only one bone every other time he'd been over.

"Ok," Stiles said, drawing out the two syllables in a doubtful tone of voice. Derek was definitely acting weird. Weirder than normal, even, which definitely took some serious effort. The couch was a little closer to the TV. Maybe Derek's eyesight was going bad? He was nearly twenty four, which had to be well over a hundred in dog years, right? That was probably it.

It didn't matter. There were snacks, and there was Monty Python, and it was totally time for a solid hour and a half of holy hand grenades, and flying cows, and annoying Jackson with movie quotes.

Except…

Except it was pretty damned hard to concentrate on migratory coconuts and the air speed velocities of European swallows with the solid warmth of Derek's knee pressing up against his thigh. Derek shifted, and Stiles held his breath as the alpha settled more firmly against his side.

Stiles squeezed his eyes shut, sure Derek could hear the irregular drumming of his heart, the startled hitch in his breath. He'd been fine three minutes ago with Isaac plastered against him. Hell, Jackson was still leaning against his other side and it didn't feel weird at all. Why was he suddenly so hyperaware of every point where Derek was touching him?

 _It doesn't mean anything_ , Stiles thought firmly.

It was just the novelty of the whole situation. He wasn't used to Derek being this close without the threat of imminent violence. He'd conditioned himself to expect an attack whenever Derek was around, and now his body was reacting to Derek's proximity in an attempt at self-preservation. That had to be it.

Except for how that wasn't it at all.

Stiles swallowed hard, then took another deep breath and held it.

Shit.

Ok.

So he kind of already knew he had a thing for Derek. No big deal. He could work with it. It was probably just a crush, right? A normal, hormonal thing because Stiles was eighteen and Derek was undeniably hot, and being pressed up against all that muscle when they trained was just messing with his head. He'd get over it in no time. Derek was sort of an asshole. Eventually common sense would conquer his libido, and he'd remember that Derek barely tolerated him – that they barely tolerated _each other_ \- and everything would be _fine_.

In the meantime, there was nothing to stress about. Stiles could be chill. He could act normal. He could pretend to be a functional human being. It shouldn't be that hard.

…which would have been a lot easier to believe if he hadn't already, somehow, forgotten to breathe. His lungs were screaming from the lack of oxygen, vision going a bit starry at the edges, and yeah, Stiles was basically totally screwed.

 _Be cool, Stilinski,_ he thought desperately, forcing himself to exhale and open his eyes.

Scott was staring straight at him from the opposite couch, eyebrows drawn in a confused line. And, God, the last thing Stiles needed was an audience right now. Stupid werewolves and their stupid super-senses.

He gave Scott an embarrassed half-smile, and turned to gaze fixedly at the screen where a grubby cart driver was demanding, "Bring out your dead!" in a high, nasal voice.

Monty Python was _totally_ the best. It wasn't full of crazy werewolves or confusing feelings. No. It was full of constitutional peasants and fake witches that weighed the same as a duck, and Stiles loved it the most.

Determined to ignore everything else, he started quoting along and, halfway through the black knight's scene, he heard Scott's voice finally join back in. By the time they reached the taunting Frenchman, even Lydia was reciting the lines.

"Do you guys ever just _watch_ the movie?" Jackson finally demanded in a pained voice.

Stiles grinned and Scott laughed and Allison shook her head.

"No," Kira said unapologetically, and snuggled down next to Scott.

And ok, maybe Stiles had been wrong. Monty Python might be amazing, but he loved his pack the most.

"Maybe we should quit for today?" Scott asked, looking up from the chapter on Kepler's Laws in their physics textbook. They'd been working on Stiles' escape skills three or four nights a week, and Stiles had figured out a way to make the time doubly productive by forcing Scott to read their assignments aloud while Stiles attempted to slip his bonds. Stiles was _totally_ a good influence.

"I think I've almost got it," he replied, twisting his wrists viciously and straining against the narrow strips of plastic binding them.

That wasn't actually true. Despite all Stiles' efforts, the heavy-weight industrial zip ties around his wrists felt just as tight as they had when Scott secured them half an hour ago. Stiles' back was aching, and his muscles were tight and cramped from being stuck in the same awkward position for so long, but he wasn't ready to give up. It felt too good to have a distraction from thoughts about a certain alpha werewolf and his inexplicable movie night weirdness.

"Dude, your hands are purple." Scott sounded pained. "I think you might be bleeding."

"I'm fine," Stiles insisted, even though Scott was right. He could feel the raw ache in his wrist where the constant rubbing had worn through his skin. He gritted his teeth and ignored it.

"We can try again tomorrow," Scott suggested hopefully, "You know, after you've regained circulation in your extremities."

Stiles scoffed. "You just want to get out of explaining the conservation of angular momentum to me again."

"Honestly, I just don't want to see you lose a limb."

"Scott, buddy," Stiles craned his neck painfully so that he could look his friend in the eye, "I've got this."

Scott sighed and shrugged. "Alright." He leaned back in his desk chair. "Five more minutes."

"Nice," Stiles grinned. "Give me a deadline. Force me to work under pressure. Fantastic psychological strategy given my tendency to procrastinate."

Scott rolled his eyes. "Five minutes, then I'm cutting you free."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm on it." Stiles closed his eyes, focus drifting back to the sharp bite of plastic against his skin.

"Actually," Scott started, tone so hesitant that Stiles peered up at him again, "I've been meaning to talk to you about something."

Stiles raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Derek."

Stiles blinked at the non sequitur. Sure, with the unfortunate crush Stiles had going on, Derek was pretty much constantly on his mind these days, but he didn't think anyone else shared that particular mental ailment, especially not _Scott_.

"What about him?" Stiles asked, trying for casual and missing by miles.

Scott gave an uncomfortable shrug that was really more like a full body squirm, and grimaced in Stiles' direction. "It's a little...awkward? But Kira thinks I should tell you."

"Scott," Stiles gritted his teeth. "Tell me _what_?"

Scott winced, then said haltingly, like each word caused him physical pain, "I think there's something going on with Derek. Physically. A wolf thing."

Stiles held his breath, all thoughts of escaping his bonds completely forgotten as he waited for Scott to continue. Finally, after the silence had stretched unbearably long, Stiles demanded " _What_ wolf thing?"

Scott groaned and buried his face in his hands. "This would be so much easier if you two could talk like normal people."

"Really?" Stiles scoffed. "Remember that time in sophomore year when I ran more than _three marathons_ delivering messages between you and Allison?"

Scott frowned. "It wasn't that bad."

"I still have the MapMyRun data logged. Trust me, my friend, you don't want to throw any stones in that particular glass house."

"Alright, fine. I suck at communicating too."

"Yeah," Stiles agreed. "Let's work on that. Starting now. What does Kira think you should tell me about Derek?"

After another painfully long moment, Scott dropped his hands, leaned forward, and rested his elbows on his knees. "I think he's close to fixating on you."

"Fixating?" Stiles asked. He could tell from the way Scott said it that there was more to the word than the basic dictionary definition.

Scott nodded. "You remember how I was with Allison, when we first started dating?"

"Of course. It will forever be seared in my memory," Stiles swore solemnly. He would have put a hand over his heart, but the zip ties made that impossible. "You two were all fluffy bunnies and balloons and ice cream sundaes. I near about died of diabetes watching."

"Yeah," Scott agreed. "I thought she was the one I'd be with forever, but then things happened and, well..." He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh before going on. "When I started dating Kira, it was different. Slower."

Stiles shrugged as best as he could, trussed up as he was. "They're different people. Different relationships. And you're just as stupidly twitterpated about Kira now as you used to be about Allison. More, even. It just took longer. What does that have to do with Derek, anyways?" Stiles asked trying to get Scott back on track. He loved the fact that his best friend was a sensitive guy, but he didn't actually want to spend the next several hours hogtied and listening to an epic recounting of Scott's romantic history.

"They _are_ different people," Scott acknowledged, "But that wasn't the whole reason. I was different, too. I was an _alpha_."

Stiles blinked. "So? You haven't changed that much. You're still you, you've just upgraded to crimson headlights."

Scott grinned at that, but he shook his head. "There are differences," he said, "And one of them is fixation. When I met Kira, my instincts were all over the place. There was the teenage guy part of me that looked at her and just wanted, you know?"

Stiles nodded, because yeah, he'd done enough of the long distance lusting to understand the concept pretty well.

"But then there was a whole separate set of instincts that was telling me to wait."

"Didn't really seem like you waited."

"I did, though. I mean, I knew she liked me. Her dad flat out told me, and I could smell her reaction to that and hear the truth behind it. I was pretty sure that if I was interested, she would be, too...but I held back."

"Why?" Stiles asked, curiosity piqued.

"Apparently dating is...well, it's a bit different for alphas. As a beta, there's less responsibility. A beta can always leave a pack and become an omega or join a new pack. It might not be easy, but it's definitely an option, so attraction can overwhelm pack instinct." Scott sounded like he was reciting a lesson, and Stiles spared a moment to wonder where he'd learned it. "For alphas, everything is complicated by what's good for the pack. Alphas need someone who's compatible, someone who can make the pack stronger, and that's where fixation comes in." Scott hesitated, embarrassment painted in a flush across his cheeks.

"So it's some kind of date picking instinct?" Stiles prompted. His heart had kicked into overdrive as he frantically attempted to parse Scott's words, wondering what the hell this had to do with him and Derek.

Scott shrugged uncomfortably. "More like _mate_ picking instinct? Deaton explained it to me after I became a true alpha. He said that for a pack to thrive, there needs to be stability, and the alpha or the alpha pair builds the foundation. Alphas tend to be more volatile by nature, so fixation probably developed to balance that out. It's an instinct that drives alphas to pair with someone compatible who can strengthen and stabilize their pack. Alpha wolves mate for life, and apparently werewolves are the same."

"Woah," Stiles stared, eyes wide. "Does that mean you and Kira..."

Scott nodded, looking, of all things, proud. "Yeah."

"Holy shit, Scott!" Stiles squawked. "You got werewolf married and didn't tell me?" He felt a little betrayed.

"Sorry," Scott said. "It's just...god. It's awesome, but it's also a little weird, you know? And it just sort of happened, and when I realized what all my crazy instincts meant, I had to figure out how to explain it to Kira, which was _really_ awkward since we'd only been dating a few weeks, and I just couldn't handle trying to tell other people, too."

"But you're happy?" Stiles asked, suddenly anxious on his best friend's behalf. Had Scott been forced into something he didn't want? He and Kira seemed so well suited, but if it was only wolf instinct driving Scott rather than true emotion...

Scott looked him straight in the eye and smiled. "Yeah," he said, quieting the worry in Stiles' mind. "I'm happy."

Stiles grinned back. He couldn't help himself. Scott looked so stupidly pleased with the world, and it was totally infectious. One thing was still bothering Stiles, though.

"I have read over four hundred books on werewolves and their lore," he griped. "How have I not come across this information?"

Scott shrugged. "Deaton said it's been kept a secret on purpose. It's sort of a vulnerability. When the instinct is triggered, we don't actually have much control anymore..."

"So the alpha really doesn't have any say in the matter?" Stiles asked, a pang of that worry creeping back in.

"It's more complicated than that." Scott's brow furrowed as he concentrated, "Deaton said there're different stages of fixation. He called them...acquaintance, awareness, and, uh, pursuit, I think? And pursuit can lead either to bonding or rejection." Scott was gazing up at the ceiling, expression oddly blank as he tried to dredge up the terms from the murky depths of his memory. "Acquaintance is when an alpha meets a potential mate, and awareness is the process of getting to know them and realizing there could be a connection. Alphas can bail at either of those stages because fixation hasn't really set in. Once the fixation instinct is fully triggered, pursuit begins, and the alpha is compelled to court their potential mate. It's a really strong instinct, and it sort of takes over everything. It can be a dangerous time for packs because alphas will drop other responsibilities to focus on winning their mate."

Scott met Stiles' gaze and gave an awkward little smile. "It was really weird for me. I mean, I was pretty used to being overwhelmed by hormones - "

"You and Allison were _not_ subtle," Stiles agreed, frantically trying to sort through all the information Scott had just dumped on him.

"Yeah," Scott said with a wry grin. "But with Kira...the fixation instinct was so much stronger than anything I'd experienced before. I mean, we were in the middle of a crisis, lives were at stake, and all I could think about was being near her."

Stiles had read about werewolf mate bonds, of course, but the mechanics of it had never been explained before. Questions swirled in his mind. How long did the phases last? What qualified someone as 'compatible'? What happened if an alpha never met a potential mate? Could they date casually outside of the pool of 'mate' candidates? What exactly did it mean to be 'compelled' to court someone? And, most terrifying of all, what did this have to do with _Derek_?

"What exactly triggers the instinct?" Stiles asked instead of anything that might reveal the terrible tumult his emotions had suddenly become.

Scott shrugged. "Deaton said it could be anything - a word or a kiss or realizing you want to protect someone when they're threatened. It's a lot like falling in love, it's just more sudden and potentially more permanent for us."

"What triggered it for you?" Stiles prompted.

The dopey grin that spread across Scotts face once again reassured Stiles. Scott, at least, appeared completely happy about his whole crazy werewolf instinct experience.

"It was actually just before our first kiss. It was while you were – when the Nogitsune was..." Scott trailed off and shook his head, unable to finish the sentence. "I was so worried. Worried I was going to fail. Worried you would die. Worried the pack would fall apart. Then Kira told me, 'We're going to save him. We'll figure it out,' and she sounded so sure and so calm, and I knew. I just knew she was the one for me."

"D'awwww," Stiles grinned. "You guys are the sweetest pair of killer monsters ever."

Scott blushed, looking inordinately pleased.

"What happens after pursuit?" Stiles asked, still full to the brim with unanswered questions.

Scott shrugged. "Pursuit eventually leads to a mate bond or to rejection. If the potential mate accepts an alpha's advances, a mate bond forms, but if they honestly and wholeheartedly refuse, it breaks the fixation, and the alpha's instincts return to normal."

"I assume Kira accepted?" Stiles prompted.

"Yeah." Scott beamed, and Stiles couldn't help smiling back.

Scott's phone buzzed, breaking the momentary silence. He snagged it on off the desk, and his smile softened when he saw the caller ID. "Hey," he said after thumbing the screen. "Yeah. Sure. Where? Ok. I'll be there in a couple minutes."

"Kira?" Stiles asked, not really needing Scott's nod of confirmation.

"Yeah. She's got a flat tire and the jack in her car's broken. I'm gonna go give her a hand."

"Like I said, sweetest monster couple ever."

"We are pretty adorable," Scott agreed, snagging his keys off his desk and grinning at Stiles over his shoulder as he headed out the door.

"Wait," Stiles blinked at the empty doorway, then continued, voice steadily rising. "Uh, Scott? Dude, we were sort of in the middle of a conversation. And, in case you've forgotten, I'm still a bit tied up here..."

There was no answer from the hallway except the distant click of the front door closing. Damn werewolf speed.

"Scott?" Stiles tried again, even louder this time. "Is this a new tactic? See if the rising panic sets in and inspires a new brilliant way to get out of these zip ties? Good plan buddy. Great thinking. But yeah, actually, I can see what you were saying earlier. I'm not really feeling my fingers any more, and a little circulation would probably be good for them, so if I could borrow one of your claws for just a minute..."

The throaty revving of a dirt bike engine was followed by a quickly receding rumble.

"Fixation?" Stiles asked the empty room. "Yeah. I can see it now."

He tried to wiggle his fingers, which had gone decidedly numb. With a sigh, he set about gathering his scattered thoughts, trying to piece together the focus he'd need to break out of the damned zip ties.

It was going to be a long night.

Stiles manically clicked through the twenty-seven open tabs on his browser, ignoring the ache in his wrists as he flipped from articles on manticores to harpies to chupacabras to dragons and back. The floats in Beacon Hills' supernatural parade kept getting weirder and weirder, and after months of research, Stiles still had absolutely no idea how to shut it down.

The key was the Nematon. It _had_ to be. But there was absolutely no information Stiles could find on how to turn it off. He'd followed the hint Derek had given him about the Order of Silence, but the digital trail had run cold suspiciously fast, and the only references he'd found in books were murky and vague.

It didn't really matter at the moment, though, because, thanks to Scott, Stiles couldn't focus worth a damn.

It had taken Stiles over an hour to snap the zip ties and break free. As soon as he'd regained enough feeling in his feet to walk without falling over, he'd fled from Scott's house.

Unfortunately, he couldn't escape Scott's words so easily. They had followed him home, rattling around in his head like pennies in a tin can, clattering and clanking and making absolutely no sense.

Fixation? The whole concept sounded awful. Sure, Scott seemed happy enough, but Scott tended to be almost dangerously laid-back at times. Stiles wasn't sure if his ability to remain calm in life-threatening situations was a sign of strong leadership skills, or an alarming lack of self preservation instincts.

Stiles tried to imagine himself in Scott's shoes and felt his gut twist.

Kira was amazing, and she and Scott made an awesome pair, but if _Stiles_ had been basically forced into being with someone, no matter how awesome they were, he'd probably hate them on principle. Maybe he was still a little touchy after the whole possession thing, but any hint that his mind was being manipulated made something inside him start to scream.

And Scott thought Derek was going to fixate on _him_?

Ok, there had been _something_ going on during movie night. Derek had been even more enigmatic than usual. He'd loomed and grumbled and bossed people around, which was par for the course, but there had been something different about it. It was almost like the looming had a _purpose_.

He hadn't been all over Stiles, though, and Stiles had gotten the strong impression that that was pretty much how fixation worked, what with the compulsion to court that Scott had talked about. That had to mean the pursuit instinct hadn't been triggered, and Derek wasn't fixated on him yet, right?

"I should just ask him," Stiles muttered, grabbing his phone and clicking the screen on. He punched in his password and scrolled to Derek's number, then stared at it for a solid ten seconds before dropping his phone back down on his desk.

"This is ridiculous," Stiles mumbled.

Derek couldn't be into him. The alpha was a veritable wall of trust issues and angst. Stiles wasn't even sure he was capable of anything as mundane as _liking_ someone anymore. Stiles couldn't really blame him, what with the epic treachery and carnage that had ended the three relationships he knew about.

But that was another point, wasn't it? All three of Derek's known partners had been girls, and two of them had been horrifyingly homicidal. Derek seemed to have a gender preference and possibly a type, and Stiles was a square peg that didn't fit into either of those round holes. Or, more accurately, Stiles had a round peg instead of a hole, and, oh god, Stiles' brain was never allowed to use metaphors _ever again._

He groaned and scrubbed his hands through his hair.

"Scott is totally reading too much into this," he muttered, mustering up as much willful denial as he could.

It did no good. Something _was_ going on with Derek, and Stiles was basically genetically incapable of leaving a question unanswered when he could be poking at it.

"Ungh," he groaned, leaning his head back and pressing his palms against his eyes. "Ok, what's the worst that could happen?" He dropped his hands and stared up at his ceiling. It remained silent and completely unhelpful.

"I call Derek," Stiles prompted. "And ask him if he's into me, and he laughs?" The ceiling didn't answer, though Stiles thought the random shapes made by the popcorn divots looked slightly more judgmental than they had before.

"Right. No. You're right. If I'm going with the worst case scenario, I have to make it the actual _worst_ worst case." Stiles thought he was starting to make out a face in the senseless jumble of ceiling dots, and wondered slightly about his sanity.

"Worst case is Derek getting disgusted and kicking me out of the pack. Then the pack would have no awesome research powers when the next big baddie rolls into town and the whole pack would get taken out, and Beacon Hills along with it. And then maybe the whole world. Yeah, the world ending would probably be the worst case."

The ceiling dot face had no comforting words to give.

Stiles wallowed in his self-invented apocalypse for a miserable moment before sitting up and glaring at his phone. "Ok. World exploding is possible, but highly unlikely," he decided. "He'll probably just shoot me down or laugh, and then at least I'll have an answer."

Stiles picked up his phone, then hesitated, staring down at it. "What if Scott's right, though?" he wondered. What if Derek really _was_ near fixating on him? What if all it took was this phone call or some accidental intimate contact in their next sparring session to trigger Derek's crazy alpha instincts? Was that a risk he was willing to take?

Sure it would be pretty amazing if Derek was actually interested in him, but if that interest came at the price of Derek's free will? If it was just some biological imperative forcing the interest and not actual emotions? What would happen once the hormones wore off and Derek found himself tied to a hyperactive teenage boy? Stile's stomach gave a sickening churn.

"If he fixates, I can just say no," Stiles decided.

Except what was that Scott had said? Something like 'honest and wholehearted refusal.' Would Stiles be able to honestly and wholeheartedly refuse Derek if it came to that?

"Sure," he said aloud, trying to make himself believe it. He swallowed and nodded. "If I have to." He wasn't going to take Derek's will away, or let himself get tangled up in a freaky werewolf bond that would only cause angst and resentment in the long run. He'd figure out a way to refuse that sounded genuine enough to fool even alpha senses, and then Derek would be free to like someone he was actually interested in.

But all of this was just baseless speculation without knowing what Derek felt.

"Right. Calling him." Stiles said, and picked up his phone.

A thump on the roof outside his window made Stiles jump and drop the phone right back on his desk. He blinked owlishly, peering out into the dark night, gut clenched in something like fear. Sure, nightly window visits from certain supernatural friends were a regular staple of his adolescent life, but those supernatural friends were all unfairly graceful, and usually didn't land on his roof like an uncoordinated sack of bricks.

After half a panicked heartbeat, Stiles made out a familiar silhouette against the moon-bright sky, and heaved a sigh of relief.

"Derek," he said, pushing himself out of his desk chair and stepping over to the window. "What the hell, dude?"

Stiles shoved the window open. As soon as the glass was out of the way, he knew something was wrong.

Derek slumped forward over the sill, and would have face-planted on the carpet if Stiles hadn't caught him. He grabbed the alpha's shoulders, and winced as he felt a horrifyingly familiar warm wetness slicking his fingers.

"Shitshitshit!" Stiles cursed, registering the surreal crimson of Derek's blood on his hands at the same time as he noticed an alarming number of narrow, wooden shafts sticking out of the torn fabric of Derek's shirt and jeans. He swallowed against the rising bile in his throat.

Where those _arrows_?

They were only about a foot long, but the straight lengths, tiny fletchings, and delicately notched ends looked exactly like miniature versions of Allison's usual projectiles.

"Stiles?" his dad called, footsteps heavy on the stairs as he hurried towards the noise and curses.

"It's Derek," Stiles called back, helping the alpha ooze in awkwardly through the window. "He's hurt."

"Here," Dad said as he rushed into the room, "Let me help."

It was a testament to the insanity of life in Beacon Hills that Stiles and his dad had pretty much perfected the Stilinski-Crutch Maneuver. Slinging Derek's arms around their shoulders, they bundled the injured alpha into the bathroom, and gently lowered him down to rest against the side of the tub. They had learned long ago that cleaning copious amounts of blood off of tile was a hell of a lot easier than cleaning it out of the carpet, and the bathroom came with the bonus of a massive, fully stocked first aid cabinet.

"What happened?" Stiles demanded as he wrenched open the cabinet door.

"Gnomes," Derek grated, voice wet like water over loose gravel.

"What?" Stiles jerked around to face Derek with a stack of gauze in one hand and a roll of vet wrap in the other.

"Gnomes," Derek hissed again.

"Gnomes?" Stiles repeated, voice cracking over the word. "Like the happy little pointy-hatted lawn ornaments? Or like the angry little potato-men in Harry Potter?"

Derek half-smiled and gave a sort of terrible wet rasping wheeze that shattered into wracking coughs, and Stiles felt something inside himself break, because a laugh should never sound like that.

"Worse," Derek groaned, once he'd managed to get his breath back under control. "Much worse."

"You look like a pin cushion," Stiles said, hand hovering over one of the protruding pieces of wood. "Why didn't you take these out?"

"Can't," Derek gritted between clenched teeth. "Mountain ash shafts...barbed arrowheads." Derek was sucking in painful, grinding breaths every few words, and Stiles wondered how he'd managed to drag himself this far, where he'd found the strength to make the leap up to Stiles' window.

"Shit," Stiles cursed again, this time at the frighteningly efficient ingenuity of the weapons. With the mountain ash shafts, there was no way to push the arrows cleanly through a werewolf's body, and depending on the type of barbs on the arrowheads, pulling them back out was going to be a messy job.

"What about the pack?" Dad asked as Stiles rifled through the first aid kit looking for the rest of the supplies he'd need.

"Just me...Was running by...the old bridge...on Highway 32...Ambushed me...about twenty of them."

Each wet scrape of Derek's inhales made Stiles grit his teeth a little harder, but he swallowed and forced himself to focused on the medical supplies.

"Got it," Dad said with a firm nod. "I'll call Lydia for information and backup. Can you handle things here?" he asked, meeting Stiles' eyes.

Stiles nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I've got this. Be careful."

"Will do," the Sheriff promised, heading towards the door.

"Sheriff," Derek rasped.

Dad turned back to him.

"Use riot gear...their weapons...were made for...supernatural...probably won't go through...bulletproof vests."

Dad nodded, and slipped out the door.

"Thanks," Stiles said quietly, sincerely grateful for anything that might help keep his dad and the pack a little safer.

Derek's neck bent slightly in what could have been a nod, or maybe he was just exhausted from the blood loss and couldn't hold his head up any more.

Stiles swallowed and quickly counted the alarming number of mountain ash shafts sticking out of Derek's ashen skin – twenty-seven that he could see, though there were probably several more in Derek's back, jammed against the tub or the floor. Each of the open wounds was streaming a steady flow of blood. Werewolf healing could do wonders, but with the arrows still lodged in the wounds, there was no way for them to close up. No wonder Derek could barely hold his head up.

"I need to see the wounds," Stiles started, then stopped, Scott's words racing through his mind again.

What if helping Derek triggered his fixation?

Stiles shook his head. There wasn't time to worry about that now. Derek needed help, and Stiles was the only one here to give it. He grabbed the scissors he'd taken out of the cabinet, and shot Derek an apologetic look. "I've gotta cut your shirt off."

"It's ruined anyway," Derek shrugged, then hissed as the movement jostled the arrows.

"Stay still," Stiles warned, and peeled the dark, sodden fabric away from Derek's skin, scissoring through it ruthlessly. By the time he was done cutting each arrow free, the shirt was in shreds on the floor, and he finally had a clear view of the angry wounds around the arrow shafts.

The skin was trying to heal - Stiles could see it mending before his eyes – but it tore open against the sharp edge of the arrowhead's base every time Derek took a breath.

"Did you get a good look at the arrowheads?" Stiles asked, hoping he wasn't going to have to try to treat this blind.

"Yeah," Derek opened his eyes, and Stiles only then realized that he'd closed them. "They're nasty...four prongs...shaped like grappling hooks...about two inches wide...needle-thin. They're razor-sharp on the front side...blunt on the back."

"So I can't push them through you because of the mountain ash, and I can't pull them out because they'll probably break off under the skin?"

Derek nodded his assent.

"Which basically means..." Stiles trailed off, not wanting to come to the logical conclusion.

"You have to...cut them out," Derek finished for him.

Stiles winced.

"Sorry," Derek whispered, his voice somehow sounding even more wrecked.

"No," Stiles shook his head, suddenly feeling like an absolute ass. "I just really prefer not to cause you pain, you know?"

"It won't hurt," Derek said, then apparently realizing how utterly ridiculous that was, added, "not any more than it...already does."

"Right." Stiles took a deep breath and picked up a scalpel. "Which one hurts the worst?"

Derek pointed to a shaft embedded just under his ribcage, and Stiles wondered briefly if that was the source of the wet rasping in his breath, if one of the arrow's barbs was somehow caught in the delicate tissue of Derek's lung.

Anatomy, Stiles thought, not for the first time, was really one of those subjects they should teach at Beacon Hill's High. The practical value had to be higher than most of his other classes.

Laying the scalpel directly along the side of the arrow shaft, Stiles glanced up to meet Derek's eyes. "Sorry," he said, and pushed the sharp blade deep into Derek's flesh.

It took several faltering slices for Stiles to locate the first side of the arrowhead's barbs. It was, as Derek had said, needle-thin and curled like the end of a fishhook. Stiles cut again, then again, finally locating the second barb on the third slice. By that point, the tissue around his first cuts had already closed up. He carved the skin there open again, quicker this time, and with two sides of the hooks free, he tugged on the arrow and the remaining ends pulled out easily.

Panting slightly, Stiles looked in disbelief at the arrowhead. It was about two inches wide, with barbs thin enough to look brittle. It shouldn't have been strong enough to punch through Derek's skin, but something about the way it gleamed strangely in the muted bathroom light told Stiles it wasn't made of ordinary materials.

"Dragon bone," Derek said, confirming Stiles suspicions.

"Isn't dragon bone fatal to the supernatural?" Stiles asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. Suddenly, Derek's weakened state, rasping breath, and sallow skin seemed even more ominous than they already had.

"It can be," Derek acknowledged, "And will be if we... don't get these out soon."

"Right," Stiles said, glad his hands were holding steady, even if his voice wasn't.

It was brutal, bloody work, but after the third arrow, Stiles found a sort of rhythm. One exploratory cut to locate the first barbed prong, then another calculated cut – done quickly before the first healed – to free the second, and then a sharp, sideways tug on the shaft to pull the third and fourth prongs free.

Stiles worked as efficiently as he could, pulling arrows from Derek's chest, neck, and shoulders. He knew the faster he got the arrows out, the quicker Derek would heal, so he didn't pause between them, didn't try to give Derek a break between bursts of pain. He also refused to give himself any time to nurse his aching wrists – still sore from the zip ties earlier that evening.

A small part of his mind, the only part that wasn't wholly invested in the gory mechanics of slice-slice-pull, knew that if he allowed himself to register the awful squelching sounds of skin tearing under the scalpel's honed edge, or the jerking resistance he felt as he ripped the arrows through already healing muscle and skin, he was going to be sick. He swallowed back bile, and forced his mind blank, focusing only on the motions themselves.

When he got to the arrows in Derek's thighs, he didn't slow down, just sliced the denim along with Derek's skin. Derek sat stoically through the whole thing, his eyes screwed shut, lips a flat line. Though his breath occasionally hitched, he gave no other real indication of the pain he must be in. Once Stiles had gotten all the visible arrows off his front, Derek rolled over carefully to give Stiles access to the smattering of arrows lodged in his back.

Finally, the last arrow slid free of Derek's skin and Stiles tossed it tiredly away.

"That's it," Stiles said, and Derek slowly rolled over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.

"Thank you," he breathed, not meeting Stiles' eyes.

"Don't mention it," Stiles answered, suddenly feeling inexplicably awkward. He stood up jerkily, turning on the sink and washing the blood – Derek's blood – off his hands. "Just glad you're not going to die on me. The last thing I want to do tonight is attempt to dispose of a corpse."

Derek gave a messy snort, but it sounded more amused than pained, so Stiles would take it.

"I'm going to go call my dad, then clean the blood off the floor and window in my room," Stiles said, pulling a fresh towel out of the small portion of the cabinet that wasn't dedicated to medical supplies. "And I'll grab you a pair of sweats while I'm at it. You probably shouldn't wear those jeans in public, seeing as they're more hole than fabric at this point."

Derek grunted, this time, and Stiles chose to interpret it as assent.

He slipped out the door, and into his room, snagging his phone off his desk. He had no idea how long it had taken him to patch Derek up. Had his dad even arrived at the spot where Derek had been ambushed yet? The phone rang twice, then Dad's voice came on the line.

"Stiles, how's Derek?"

"Fine, I think. I got all the arrows out of him. He's cleaning himself up, now," Stiles answered.

"Glad to hear it," Dad said, relief clear in his voice. "Yeah," he said, this time clearly not speaking to Stiles. "He's alright. Stiles patched him up."

Stiles heard the muffled sounds of relieved voices in the background. "You're with the pack?" he asked. "What happened with the gnomes?"

"We took them down. The riot gear neutralized most of their weapons, so it was pretty quick. Thank Derek for the tip."

"I will," Stiles said, feeling a tension in his shoulders ease.

"They were nasty little things. Shot at us without provocation as soon as we came within fifty feet of the bridge. I'm usually not one for shooting before I know the whole story, but these guys were not in the negotiating mood. According to Lydia, they usually live in massive underground warrens called gnome-holes, and they rarely leave. They can be pretty territorial, which might explain their actions..."

"Except they weren't in their territory," Stiles said, finishing his dad's thought. "They were on pack land."

"Exactly," Dad replied.

"So why did they leave their warren?" Stiles wondered.

"And what got them so riled up that they shot at anything that moved? Also, there were only twenty-four gnomes here." Dad added, "and Lydia said the warrens usually house thousands."

"Right," Stiles said, a strange shiver running down his spine. "I'll look into it."

"Great. We're working on cleaning up the scene, then I'll be heading to the station for my shift. Call me if you find anything."

"Sure," Stiles said. "Love you."

"You too, kiddo," Dad replied, then hung up.

Stiles sighed and reached under the sink for a bucket. As he filled it halfway with water, his thoughts spun through the possibilities. Why would supposedly territorial gnomes leave their gnome-holes? Why would two dozen of them split off of a much larger colony? And why would they move into land already claimed by wolves?

Stiles snagged a box of carpet cleaner and measured out the right ratio of chemicals to water without really paying attention. One slightly disturbing side effect his supernatural lifestyle was an intimate knowledge of the best stain removing products, and which worked best on blood at various stages of drying. It was a little creepy, but at least if he ever cracked and went on a murderous rampage, he'd probably be able to cover up his tracks.

Stiles trudged up stairs, water sloshing in the bucket, and got to work cleaning up the stains. Considering how bloody Derek had been when he'd tumbled through Stiles' window, there was actually relatively little mess on the floor. Stiles scrubbed and scraped, wiped and blotted, and the walls and carpet looked almost normal after about ten minutes. He left a fan blowing over the drying spots, and snagged a pair of sweats and his loosest fitting shirt before heading back to the bathroom.

It wasn't until he stood in the open doorway staring down at Derek's still-prone form, that he registered the fact that he'd never heard the shower turn on.

"Dude," Stiles said, blinking down at the alpha, who was still sprawled in his own drying blood-puddle. "You didn't move."

"I think," Derek said, sounding strangely philosophical, "I need help."

"What?" Stiles demanded, tossing the clothes down as he rushed to Derek's side, "Why aren't you healing? Did I miss an arrowhead? Did part of one break off or something? Is there still a piece of dragon bone inside you?" He'd checked each arrowhead as he pulled it out and he'd thought they were all whole, but maybe he'd missed something.

"No," Derek shook his head. "You got them all. And I'm healing, it's just slow." Derek's words came slowly, his voice a little slurred. He blinked, and even that tiny movement looked like it took more energy than Derek had. "I lost a lot of blood, and the dragon bone weakened me."

The poor guy looked utterly worn out, and Stiles, with a pang of guilt, realized he'd left him here on the ground covered in blood while he went to _clean the floor_. God, he was the worst.

On the plus side, this would probably be a pretty major turnoff for any alpha instincts looking for a compatible mate, right? No one wanted to be abandoned in favor of carpet cleaning.

"Alright, big guy," Stiles said, still kicking himself for being an ass. "Time to get you rinsed off." He turned on the water, and waited until it ran warm before looking back to Derek. "Can you stand?"

"Maybe." Derek sounded doubtful.

Stiles snagged one of his arms and pulled it up over his shoulder. "Up," he said, realizing only after the word was out of his mouth that he sounded like a trainer talking to a dog.

Whatever. It worked, and with their combined effort, Derek was officially upright. Stiles helped him balance as he stepped carefully into the tub.

"You good?" he asked as the warm water sluiced down Derek's sides and over his jeans, pooling in rust-colored swirls at his feet. Stiles carefully stepped back, hoping Derek could stand on his own.

It became immediately apparent that Derek _couldn't_ as the alpha swayed alarmingly, hands reaching out for Stiles' support.

Stiles grabbed him. "Shit, ok, hang on a second," he said, fishing his phone out of his pocket and sliding it onto the counter. He stepped into the shower in front of Derek, still fully clothed. Warm water quickly plastered all of the fabric to his skin.

"Thanks," Derek said, sounding about as awkward as Stiles had ever heard him.

"No problem," Stiles shrugged, trying to ignore the warm press of Derek's palms on his shoulders as he flashed a grin he hoped didn't look forced.

Now was _not_ the time for his over-eager teenage hormones to start getting any ideas, especially when Derek was injured and vulnerable, and probably even more susceptible than usual to the triggering of this whole fixation instinct thing.

It was all good. They were just two guys, hanging out in a shower, trying to wash away the evidence of an assault by angry gnomes. There was nothing weird going on. There was definitely nothing _sexy_ going on.

Derek tipped his head back, allowing the spray to flatten his hair, run over the sculpted angles of his face, and stream down the impossible lines of his neck.

Stiles was _doomed_.

"Here," he said, reaching for his bottle of body wash. He flipped open the cap, and offered it to Derek, pouring a puddle into the alpha's open palm.

With painstaking slowness, Derek began to rub the soap over his chest.

Stiles watched for exactly three mesmerized seconds before he managed to screw his eyes closed.

God, even the _sounds_ were indecent, Stiles thought frantically, as the smooth swish of skin over wet skin conjured filthy images in his head. He must have done something truly awful in a past life to have to sufferer through this torture.

"The pack managed to take down the gnomes," Stiles babbled, desperate for a distraction. "They used the riot gear like you recommended. Dad said thanks for the tip."

"Good," Derek grunted. "Any idea why they were there?"

"Lydia came up with some info on gnomes. Apparently, they're pretty territorial and they live in little cities underground. Both of which mean it's pretty weird these guys would have broken off from the rest of their group to come here," Stiles said, resolutely ignoring the sound of unzipping and wet fabric falling to the floor. "Maybe they were cast out by the other gnomes? Like they were gnomish criminals who were exiled, which would fit with their trigger-happy ways. Or maybe the nematon pulled them here? But then why wouldn't the rest of their little gnomy compatriots come, too? Maybe the nematon affects some gnomes more strongly than others. Or maybe it's something else altogether. I'll do some research and see what I can come up with."

The flow of water cut off, and Stiles realized Derek must have finished.

He reached blindly for where he remembered setting the towel, and presented it to Derek, thanking whatever gods might be listening that he'd survived with most of his dignity intact. Derek shoved the towel back at him.

"You're even wetter than I am," he said, plucking at Stiles' sopping shirt.

Stiles hesitantly cracked his eyes open then slammed them closed again when all he saw was smooth, sleek skin.

"Put some pants on!" he squeaked, not at all proud of the way his voice cracked.

Derek huffed, as though modesty was somehow beneath him, but Stiles felt him reaching for the sweats and stepping into them.

Careful not to disturb Derek's balance, Stiles used the damp towel to dry his hair.

Derek let out a long breath. "You can open your eyes now. I'm decent."

He was, Stiles saw when he finally squinted his eyes open, just _barely_ decent, sweats tucked dangerously low around his waist, and droplets of water still clinging to his bare skin. Stiles would have insisted on the shirt as well, except for the fact that in addition to looking almost criminally hot, Derek also looked about ready to pass out.

Stiles blinked and refocused. "Ok dude, let's find you a place to crash before you face plant on the tile."

Not knowing where else to guide him – there were only the two bedrooms, and the couch was all the way down stairs – Stiles led Derek to his room and shoved him down on the bed.

"You look like hell," he informed the alpha. "Try to get some sleep. The pack will never forgive me if I let you kick the bucket on my watch. Plus I'll never be able to sleep in that bed again if you die in it."

"Your words of concern touch me deeply," Derek deadpanned.

Stiles snorted, shuffling over to his dresser to get out of his sodden clothes. He made quick work of it, changing locker-room style even though Derek was probably already unconscious, then went to draped his wet clothes up in the bathroom to dry. He cleaned the blood off the tile, scrubbed the sink and the tub, and finally returned to his room, and started up his laptop.

He was exhausted. Between the physical strain of the zip ties and the emotional strain of helping Derek, he didn't actually have much energy left to give. Still, he shuffled through page after page, looking for anything that might explain the gnomes' strange behavior, determined to find some sort of explanation. After a solid hour of searching, he'd come up with nothing.

There _had_ to be a reason behind their actions. He must not be using the right search terms, or finding the right sites. His usual haunts had failed him, but that didn't mean the information wasn't out there. With a sigh, Stiles pushed himself away from the desk. He'd try again tomorrow when his brain was actually functioning. For now, it was time to sleep.

As he walked past the bed, Derek's hand shot out and latched onto his already sore wrist.

"Where are you going?" Derek mumbled, sounding like he'd just woken up.

Stiles swallowed, breathing deep to calm his startled heart. "Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to wake you up. I'm just going downstairs. I'll crash on the couch."

"No," Derek said, clearly only half conscious. "Stay." He tugged on Stiles wrist.

"Dude," Stiles grunted, pulled forward by the semiconscious alpha's strength. "The couch is fine."

"No. Sleep here," Derek insisted, tugging again.

"Really," Stiles said, resisting Derek's grip. "I'm fine on the couch."

"I won't sleep if you're not here," Derek mumbled, sounding more vulnerable than Stiles had ever heard him.

Stiles felt his stomach drop. Could this be the fixation Scott had warned him about?

"You'll be fine." Stiles tried. "I'll be right downstairs."

"No." Derek shook his head, fingers an insistent pressure on Stiles' sore wrist. "I'm still healing. I need my pack. I need to be close."

Stiles swallowed. It was true that alphas drew power from their pack, that they were stronger and healed faster when surrounded by pack members. Maybe that's all this was.

"Ok," he relented. "I'll stay. I can sleep on the floor. Hand me a pillow?"

"There's room here," Derek said, scooting back and pulling up the blankets.

"The floor is close enough," Stiles insisted.

"I'll heal faster with you closer," Derek said, and Stiles finally looked up and met his eyes. They were sleepy, half-lidded, but somehow more open that Stiles had ever seen them before.

"Fine," Stiles sighed, scrubbing his free hand over his face. It didn't have to be weird. He was staying to keep an eye on Derek, and to help him heal. There was nothing untoward going on. And if there was something more, if this was the start of fixation, it wasn't like staying here was agreeing to anything, right? He'd be able to figure out a way to refuse Derek later, if it was necessary. For now, they both needed to sleep.

He slipped carefully into the tiny twin bed, which felt even tinier when it was already occupied by Derek's hulking muscles, and tried to find a comfortable position. He shifted restlessly, awkward and jerky, hyper aware of any accidental brushes of skin.

"Sleep," Derek breathed, after five solid minutes of rustling sheets.

"I'm trying," Stiles grumbled. He shifted again, then again, accidentally kicking Derek's shin.

The alpha growled, and slung an arm around Stiles' waist, dragging him unceremoniously back until he was clamped against Derek's bare chest.

"Sleep," Derek repeated, and Stiles felt the low vibration of Derek's voice rumble all the way down his spine.

"Right," Stiles said, trying to hold himself preternaturally still, and ignoring the body heat seeping through the single layer of cotton separating them.

Derek was clearly having no trouble at all with this situation. His breathing rapidly evened out, and the heavy arm around Stiles' waist relaxed.

Stiles blinked at the dark room. "Not awkward," he whispered into the stillness. "Not awkward unless I let it _be_ awkward."

"Stiles," Derek growled, seemingly still asleep.

"You're right," Stiles conceded. "It's totally awkward."

Except for how it was warm and safe and comfortable. Except for how it felt totally and unnervingly right. Fortunately his exhausted body finally managed to bludgeon his brain to sleep before he had time to think about any of that too closely.

Stiles' phone buzzed.

He blinked his eyes open, then groaned and squeezed them shut again when a cruel ray of sunlight lanced through his window and stabbed him in the brain.

"It can't be morning yet," he grumbled, scrubbing a hand over his face and wincing when his sore wrist protested the movement. "I just closed my eyes." He made to roll onto his stomach, intent on burying his whole head under his pillow, then froze when he felt an unexpected weight looped around his waist.

It took Stiles a long moment as his mind did its usual early-morning fumble for consciousness to register that the weight around his waist was an arm. It took him another few confused seconds to work out that there was a solid slab of muscle pressed flush along his back, a warm leg tangled between his own, and a prickly scratch of stubble rasping gently against his shoulder...

" _Derek_."

Stiles' eyes popped open in appalled realization because _of course_ he'd said that out loud, and _of course_ he'd paired the name with a massive, full-body flail, effectively demolishing any hope he might have had of extracting himself from this situation while Derek was still asleep. Someday his absent brain-to-mouth filter and complete lack of chill were going to get him _killed_.

Ten seconds in, it was starting to look like today might be that day.

Craning his neck to look over his shoulder, Stiles confirmed that, yes, it was indeed Derek Hale clinging to him like an overly affectionate cephalopod, and while Derek's current expression was hilariously befuddled and almost unnervingly relaxed, Stiles was sure it was only a matter of moments before the alpha woke up fully, and then there would be glaring and angry eyebrows and probable evisceration.

Except instead of shoving him unceremoniously off the bed like his flailing and possible elbow to the solar plexus probably deserved, Derek just blinked at him groggily, grumbled something low in his throat that might have been, "Go back to sleep," and pulled him in a little closer, nuzzling at the back of his neck.

And what the hell was Stiles supposed to do with _that_?

Freeze like a deer in the proverbial headlights, apparently.

It must have been the right move, because in seconds Derek's breathing had evened out into the steady rhythm of sleep.

 _Think, Stilinski_ , Stiles ordered himself, and exhaled slowly, trying to get his rapidly thundering heartbeat back under control.

...which was pretty much a lost cause since he was being _aggressively spooned by Derek Hale._

It felt – well, if he was going to be honest with himself, it felt good. Great, actually. The warm bracket of Derek's body wrapped protectively around his own, Derek's breath ghosting over his nape, and the prints of Derek's fingers brushing just under the hem of his shirt...

Stiles might have been tempted to follow Derek's advice, burrow back into that embrace, and let the hazy film of sleep overtake him once again, but Scott's words of warning about fixation were echoing loudly in his head, twisting any feelings of pleasure into panic and guilt.

 _Shit._

Somehow, this had all seemed sort of harmless last night. Derek had been injured. He'd needed rest. He'd needed his pack close, and Stiles was the only one around. Between the copious amount of blood and the half naked werewolf in his bed, Stiles hadn't really had the brain power to process any of it.

With the morning sunlight spilling into the room, and the worryingly inviting heat of Derek pressed all along his back, everything suddenly felt a lot more incriminating than it had the night before.

Was this the fixation that Scott had warned him about?

Stiles needed to calm the fuck down and _think_ , damn it. He shook his head to rid it of any lingering images of Derek's hands on his bare skin, then shivered, sidetracked again as the sandpaper-sweet drag of stubble at his neck sent skittering shockwaves straight to his groin.

And yeah, clearly Stiles was not getting out of this with any sort of dignity intact.

"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal," Stiles muttered, glaring down at his traitorous body.

"I am not a plastic T. Rex," Derek rumbled, clearly only half awake. "And you're not a plastic triceratops."

"It was a stegosaurus, and I wasn't talking to you," Stiles replied automatically before he registered that Derek was actually awake, which meant at any moment his super senses were going to kick in and then he'd know exactly how much Stiles was enjoying their illicit early-morning snuggle.

There was a horribly awkward silence followed by an even more horribly awkward sniff.

Stiles couldn't see it, but maybe he had some sort of psychic powers because he was almost positive he could _sense_ Derek raising a sardonic eyebrow before he said, "Your dick isn't a T. Rex either."

" _Oh my God,_ " Stiles groaned, burying his face in his hands. "We are so not having this conversation right now."

Stiles felt Derek shrug. "You're the one who started quoting Firefly."

"It's _really_ not the Firefly quotes I'm struggling with," Stiles said, wiggling forward to put as much distance as he could between himself and the wall of annoying werewolf behind him. It wasn't much space, because Derek's arm was still wrapped unyieldingly around his waist.

"Stiles," Derek started, but Stiles was not in any way prepared to navigate a dialogue that involved his dick while in bed with Derek _fucking_ Hale.

Derek cleared his throat. "You know fucking isn't my middle name, right?"

And, shit, exactly how much of that had Stiles said out loud? Jesus, he seriously had no brain to mouth filter _at all_ this early in the morning.

"You really don't," Derek agreed. He was shaking now, whole body wracked with silent convulsions. Stiles shot a concerned look over his shoulder, and caught the quirk of a smirk twitching at the corner of Derek's lips before he managed to suppress it.

The fucker was _laughing_ – and, God, if the circumstances were any different, Stiles would have been ecstatic about wringing even the tiniest chuckle from the perpetually broody alpha, especially considering how close to kicking the bucket he'd been last night.

As it was, Stiles glared over his shoulder as he felt a flush marching across his cheeks like a conquering army, and decided: "I am going to murder you with a spoon."

Derek shook even harder.

"Pain," Stiles growled. "Lots of pain."

"Stiles–" Derek said, clearly trying to rein in his uncharacteristic mirth.

Stiles' phone buzzed again, and he flung himself towards it, the sheer power of his embarrassment (or maybe the fact that Derek was laughing too hard to use his super-strength) finally allowing him to break free from Derek's hold. He rolled right off the bed and landed in an ungainly heap, taking most of the sheets with him.

"Oww," he complained, reaching for his phone. He thumbed the message open, read it, and sighed, "Oh thank God."

"What?" Derek asked, a hint of laugher still coloring his voice as he peered at Stiles over the edge of the bed.

Stiles immediately felt a twinge of guilt at the relief surging through him, but seriously, escaping this conversation was priority number one in his life right now. Still, he should probably try not to sound like a complete ass. "...I mean, oh shit?" he amended. "Jackson's been kidnapped by Ghouls."

"What?" Derek demanded in a completely different tone of voice.

Stiles flipped the phone around to show Derek the frantic text message from Scott.

And that quickly, they were back to business. Stiles pulled on shoes as Derek rifled through his closet and stole his loosest shirt. Less than a minute later they sped out the door, all awkwardness forgotten in the face of the next crisis.

"Ghouls are assholes," Stiles whined, holding his balled up t-shirt against his ribs to staunch the blood flowing out of his newly-acquired ghoul bite. "Is ghoulishness catching? Am I going to wake up tomorrow with an insatiable appetite for human flesh?"

"You should be fine after I disinfect it," Deaton said, gesturing to the examination table, and waiting for Stiles to wriggle painfully onto it. "Ghouls don't reproduce by biting like werewolves or vampires."

"Thank God." Stiles relaxed a little bit. He leaned back onto the hard metal table at Deaton's gentle urging, and removed the wad of cloth so the vet could see his wound.

They were alone in the clinic. Scott had dropped him off before racing back to help the rest of the wolves track down the last of the ghouls, who had scattered, fleeing the graveyard as soon as it became apparent that the pack had the upper hand. At least Stiles had made it most of the way through this battle before he managed to get himself maimed.

"You're going to need stitches," Deaton said after a quick inspection of the wound.

"Figured as much." Stiles sighed. "This is starting to feel really familiar."

Deaton gave a soft snort that might have been a laugh. "I do seem to see you on my table fairly frequently these days."

"I know, right?" Stiles groused, manfully managing not to flinch as Deaton wiped around the wound with disinfectant. "Seriously, though, am I the only one who's noticed our slip-n-slide is headed straight towards Shit Creek? Because I've been keeping track, and in the last few months, we've graduated from monster-of-the-week to monster-of-the-day."

"You have a graph of this somewhere, don't you?" Deaton asked, amusement lurking deep in his normally neutral tone.

"A _graph_?" Stiles scoffed, then hissed as Deaton jabbed him with a syringe full of what Stiles sincerely hoped was anesthetic. "Come on, give me some credit, man," he continued, once the stinging began to fade to a dull ache, "I have _spreadsheets_ full of this stuff, and any way I chart it tells me we are sinking into some seriously deep doggie doo-doo here. If this trend keeps up, we'll be at monster-of-the-minute by midway through next week."

"The frequency of supernatural threats does seem to be increasing at an alarming rate," Deaton agreed absently, most of his concentration focused on flushing out the ghoul bite.

Stiles nodded frantically. "Exactly! How are we supposed to keep up? I mean, we do well enough when we've got time to lick our wounds and heal, but at this rate we're not even getting a breather between beasts. It's ridiculous. And it's gotta be the Nemeton causing this, right? We have to find some way to shut it down. Did you ever find out anything else about the Order of Silence?"

"No more than the last seven times you asked," Deaton answered dryly. "Their previous visit to Beacon Hills was well before my time, and after the damage they wrought, the pack was understandably reluctant to discuss such a painful topic. I honestly don't know how much the wolves knew about the Order at that time beyond the fact that they were enemies who meant the pack harm."

Stiles snorted. "You mean Derek isn't the only werewolf who labels everything in the world 'pack' or 'enemy'?"

The corners of Deaton's mouth twitched in what might almost have been a wry smile. "Our lupine friends do tend to be a little black and white in their world view." He squinted down at Stiles' wound and sighed. "There's still some dirt in here. I'll have to scrub it out. This may sting a bit," he warned.

As the vet began scouring the wound with something that looked suspiciously like a tooth brush, Stiles hissed through clenched teeth and looked away. Despite the number of nasty gashes he'd acquired over the years, he still hadn't quite grown accustomed to actually seeing his own muscle and sinew exposed to the open air. He wasn't squeamish, exactly; he just really preferred that his insides stay _inside_ where they belonged. It didn't seem like a huge request, but so far the universe seemed pretty eager to deny it.

Deaton started talking again, his words calm and steady. It sounded like he was trying to sooth a startled animal, which made sense given his usual clientele. "Like I told you before, the meager scraps of information I've gathered over the years have pieced together to form a worrying picture. The Order may have roots in the druid faith, but they've strayed about as far from the ancient philosophers and scholars as it is possible to go."

"But that sounds exactly like the Darach to me. How are they different?" Stiles asked, carefully focusing on the conversation and not on the squelching sounds of Deaton's work.

"The Order and Darach both share a distant relation to the druids, but the paths they follow diverged from one another, just as they diverged from the ancient faith. The Darach are twisted. They work alone, and serve only themselves. They are, at the root, selfish beings. From what I've learned, the Order is the opposite. They're faithful to one another and _extremely_ faithful to their own interpretation of the druid beliefs. Like the druids, they believe in the power and interconnectivity of nature. Unfortunately, they see the supernatural as a threat to nature rather than a part of it."

Deaton looked away from his work and met Stiles' gaze. "They are, to use a modern analogy, extremists. They seem set on the extermination of the supernatural in order to preserve their own idea of the balance of nature. Unfortunately, there seem to be virtually no reliable sources of information about them."

"And there's no information on how they shut down the Nemeton last time?" Stiles asked.

"Nothing that I have found," Deaton acknowledged, "Though if the carnage involved in their technique is anything to go by, we are unlikely to want to emulate their methods in any case."

Stiles sighed, closing his eyes. "So we just keep fighting the monsters and hope for the best?"

"And continue to search for other methods to counteract the Nemeton, yes."

"Great." Stiles scrubbed a weary hand over his face.

"On a mildly more productive note, I did hear back from Adrianna, my contact in New Mexico," Deaton said, dabbing at Stiles' side with gauze.

Stiles blinked his eyes open and focused on the vet. "The one you thought might know about the gnomes?"

Deaton nodded. "Based on their armor, she believes they were part of the Taracorin clan, and their weapons suggest they were some of the clan's most highly skilled warriors. The Taracorin's territory is in Utah."

"Then what on earth were they doing all the way out here?" Stiles asked.

"Adrianna was able to get in touch with someone in the area." Deaton was silent a moment before continuing. "It appears the clan was massacred."

Stiles felt his eyebrows rise. "Massacred?"

"Yes," Deaton confirmed, "The warren was in ruins, and there were no living gnomes in the area."

"No living gnomes," Stiles repeated, not liking the implication of those words. "So the gnomes that shot Derek up were, what, the last surviving members of their clan?"

"It is entirely possible."

"Jesus, no wonder they were so quick to attack," Stiles said, feeling sick. "If they were fleeing from something that had just killed the rest of their clan... Any idea what it was?"

Deaton shook his head.

Stiles let out a long breath, a heavy weight settling in his gut. Had the pack slaughtered what amounted to a desperate group of refugees? Sure, those refugees had attacked first, but who wouldn't be a little trigger happy after watching the annihilation of all of their friends and family?

"Damn it," Stiles groaned and thumped his head back against the exam table. "I do not want to have a moral crisis over gnomes. Especially not gnomes that made a pincushion out of Derek." Stiles blinked away the memory of Derek's ashen skin, the aching resistance as he pulled barbed arrows out of Derek's bleeding flesh. "This is ridiculous. Even the Winchester brothers don't have to deal with this kind of shit."

Deaton raised an eyebrow. "Comparing your life to a supernatural television drama may not be the healthiest idea, Stiles."

"The fact that you know who the Winchester brothers are gives me great joy," Stiles intoned solemnly. "Trust me, if I could find a normal stick to measure my life against, I would use it, but sadly, life-ruining TV shows are the closest equivalent I've come across so far. Where else am I going to find role models for how to act in a world full of dangerous monsters, insanely hot people, and unresolved sexual tension?"

Deaton's eyebrow inched higher.

"Speaking of sexual tension," Stiles started, spying an opening and diving for it headfirst. He understood the concept of shame in theory, but he really didn't have the knack for it, especially when important information was on the line.

Deaton heaved a longsuffering sigh. "Please tell me this is not another question about tentacles."

"That was _one time_ ," Stiles protested. "The internet is full of dubious information. How am I going to know what to believe if I don't check in with a reliable source?"

"You could stop going online and read the books I've loaned you instead," Deaton said dryly.

"I have! But they're old and usually vague and sometimes contradict each other, which only raises _more_ questions, and the internet is so much _faster_ when I'm researching –"

"I suppose I should be glad that you're at least asking rather than just believing whatever insane theories you're reading. Alright. What is your question this time?" Deaton asked, with a completely peaceful expression which still somehow implied that he regretted all the choices that had led him to this conversation.

"Right. Uh. So, I was talking to Scott yesterday, and, hey, speaking of unreliable sources, I mean I love the guy and all, but he used to believe ice cream was a negative calorie food because your body had to work so hard to warm it up..."

"I assume there is a point to this," Deaton broke in, delicately threading the curved needle he was about to stab Stiles with.

"Yeah," Stiles paused, suddenly nervous. It was one thing discussing hypothetical werewolf mating rituals with his idiot best friend. It was quite another to discuss them with the local authority on lycanthropy. He swallowed "Uh. What can you tell me about fixation?"

Deaton actually started, dropping the thread as his eyes darted up to Stiles face. "Where did you hear that term?"

"Scott told me about it? He said...He said he and Kira thought maybe Derek was, uh, close to fixating. On, um. Me."

Deaton sighed and gazed up at the ceiling, and Stiles had the uncomfortable feeling that he was begging for assistance from some higher deity. "Clearly Scott and I need to have another conversation about the dangers of sharing that information."

Stiles frowned.

"It's not that I think you can't be trusted, Stiles," Deaton added quickly, "But fixation is a closely guarded secret. If Scott tells the wrong person and the hunters get wind of it, the results could be devastating to all of werewolf-kind." He scrubbed a hand over his tired face, then caught Stiles' gaze again. "Did Scott explain why he thought Derek might be near fixating?"

"No." Stiles shook his head. _He got distracted by his girlfriend and left me hogtied on his bed_ , Stiles very carefully didn't add. Scott was probably in for a long enough lecture already. "But Derek has been acting strange lately."

"How so?" Deaton prompted.

"Uh..." Stiles blinked, struggling to put the alpha's weirdness into words. "He sat next to me on the couch during movie night?"

Deaton raised a dubious eyebrow.

"Ok, obviously that sounds like nothing, but Derek never sits anywhere but the recliner. And he basically loomed over Isaac until he moved. And he gave me a birthday present. It was a weapon, which doesn't exactly scream romance, but it was totally thoughtful and custom made weapon? And he actually cares when I get hurt! I mean, that's been going on for a while, and I sort of thought it was just a pack thing, but Derek has always been more of the 'grrr, I will shove you into this wall' kind of guy, you know? So actually the caring thing is sort of a recent development. And then he snuggled me last night."

"Snuggled?" If anything, Deaton looked even more skeptical.

"Yeah. I mean, he'd lost a lot of blood after the gnome attack and said he needed pack close to heal, but he was seriously all up in my space this morning, and didn't eviscerate me even when I –" Stiles stopped. There was no way he could say 'popped a boner while we were in bed together.' If Deaton had trouble dealing with Stiles' hypothetical questions about tentacles, there was no way he wanted to hear about his actual physiological responses to a certain alpha werewolf. "– when I elbowed him," he finished weakly instead, blinking up at the florescent lights.

Deaton was silent for a long moment, seemingly occupied with cutting another length of suture thread. When he finally looked up, his expression was as unreadable as ever. "Fixation can manifest in a variety of ways. Certainly some of the behaviors you have described might be interpreted as displays of territoriality and scent marking, which could be the start of a courtship." He met Stiles' gaze and gave a slight shake of his head. "However, the fact that Scott dropped you off here while Derek is out chasing down ghouls indicates that the instinct hasn't been triggered. Scott explained the stages of fixation to you?"

Stiles nodded numbly.

Deaton refocused on threading the needle as he continued. "The pursuit instinct is extremely strong. It drives an alpha to court and protect the object of their fixation almost to the exclusion of anything else, including their own safety and that of their pack. That is where the danger lies, should the hunters ever catch wind of it. The intensity of the pursuit instinct does not fade until an alpha's courtship is wholeheartedly accepted or rejected, so depending on the circumstances, the alpha may have a prolonged period of what amounts to insanity." Deaton hesitated before continuing. "Is it safe to assume that you have neither accepted or rejected an advance from Derek?"

Stiles tensed, his mind flying back to memories of the night before, to Derek's firm grip on his wrist, Derek telling him to stay, and Stiles giving in and sliding under the covers.

Before Stiles could respond, though, Deaton added, "I am not talking about implicit acceptance or rejection - something that might be understood from an action or a gesture. I'm talking about a fully verbalized, heartfelt, and honest response to a clearly expressed proposal of intent by the alpha."

Stiles felt his muscles relax a fraction. "Derek hasn't proposed anything."

Deaton nodded. "If Derek was fixating, it would have been nearly impossible for him to allow you out of his sight while you were in pain. And allowing you to leave with another werewolf? Another _alpha_?" He shook his head.

Stiles let out a shaky breath. "So he's not fixated?"

"It doesn't sound like it. And, considering the number of ordeals the two of you have been through together, if the instinct hasn't been triggered yet, it is unlikely that it will ever happen. The basis for fixation is compatibility. Lacking that, the instinct will never come into play," Deaton said in the gentle voice of a doctor breaking bad news to a patient. "You may want to consider that what you and Derek share is a _friendship_ , which, in Derek's case, is a fairly monumental step in and of itself. It's clear that he trusts you. It's clear that he seeks your counsel. You may have to be satisfied with that."

"Who said I'm not satisfied?" Stiles asked, waving his hands around to ward off the very idea. "This is such good news. It's not like I _wanted_ to be Derek's chew toy." He a forced laugh, eternally thankful that there were no inconvenient werewolf lie detectors roaming around the clinic.

Unfortunately, the knowing look Deaton slanted his way held enough sympathy to let Stiles know that he didn't need super senses to understand the truth.

Stiles closed his eyes as Deaton finally started stitching up his wound.

 _Of course_ Derek wasn't fixated on him.

This was exactly the answer he'd been hoping for, wasn't it? He had never wanted some biological imperative to force Derek into a relationship against his will. When Scott mentioned it the first time, his initial reaction had been revulsion.

So why did this feel like a punch to the gut?

Maybe it was because his illicit daydreams were never going to leave the realm of fantasy. He and Derek weren't compatible, whatever that meant. No. Stiles knew exactly what that meant. It meant that, once again, he had fallen in love with a completely unattainable person.

And, God, why had his jackass brain chosen _now_ , of all times, to finally put a label to the tumult of emotions roiling inside him - to finally admit to the fact that he was helplessly, hopelessly in love with Derek Hale?

 _Fuck it all._

Stiles gritted his teeth and focused on the uncomfortable sensation of the needle sliding through his numbed skin as Deaton efficiently pieced him back together.

He wished that it was as easy to mend a broken heart.

Everything was better now that Stiles knew where he stood with Derek. He could stop obsessing over Derek's actions, rehashing every conversation and examining every gesture in an attempt understand what they meant. He could train with Derek without fear of triggering the fixation instinct, and he didn't need to stress about any ethical dilemmas fixation would entail.

They were _friends_.

Everything was _fine_.

Well, _almost_ everything.

Stiles still couldn't quite control the way his breath hitched when Derek first walked into a room, or the stupid little swooping summersault his stomach performed every time he noticed Derek's eyes on him. He couldn't stop his heart from kicking into high gear whenever Derek crowded into his space, or swallow down the aching feeling that swelled through him when Derek moved away again.

But at least he was sure those feelings were one-sided, now.

Stiles was used to unrequited love. Hell, it was basically his thing. He was the master of crushing on stupidly attractive and unattainable people. And if sometimes it still felt like there was something there, some spark, some connection...well. At least Stiles knew for sure it was just wishful thinking. It might be a little inconvenient and a lot painful, but he was dealing with it.

He'd even managed to find something of a rhythm to fall into. He was training harder than ever, determined to get strong enough and fast enough that he wouldn't have to rely on the wolves to protect him. He drilled with Derek every day the pack wasn't actively battling evil. He went to the shooting range with his dad three times a week and practiced escape techniques with Scott whenever their schedules aligned.

In the slivers of free time he had between school, training, and running for his life, he poured over Deaton's books and scoured the internet searching for any mentions of the Order of Silence or any methods to shut down the Nemeton. The lack of information might be frustrating, but the research process was so familiar by now that it was almost therapeutic.

Everything was slotting into place. He was coping.

And then, of course, it all went to hell.

Stiles groaned as a ray of sunlight pierced straight through his eyelids.

"Ten more minutes," he grumbled, throwing an arm across his face, and wishing the chipper morning birdsong was a little less deafening.

It felt like he'd just barely fallen into bed and closed his eyes, and he was not at all rested enough to even contemplate waking up. He'd spent more than half the previous night alternately chasing and running away from a rampaging herd of Kirin. Honestly, if he hadn't already been convinced that his life was some sort of cosmic joke, that would have done it, because wouldn't it have been all sorts of ironic if the pack's only virgin had been gored to death by a vicious group of scaly unicorns.

Stiles really, _really_ wanted to ignore the morning and sleep for the rest of his life, but yesterday had been Wednesday, which meant today was Thursday – the awful day of three midterms and a physics lab. If he missed school, it would take him _ages_ to catch up, and according to the school's attendance office, he'd already burned through his allowed absences for the semester.

With a miserable sigh, Stiles rolled over, then cursed when his elbow thwacked unexpectedly against hard stone.

"The hell?" he muttered, pushing himself upright and rubbing a hand blearily over his eyes. He peeled one eye open, then the other, then blinked several times to be sure he wasn't hallucinating.

He was in a cave; an honest-to-god mountainside cave. The stone felt rough and solid under his palms, and the mouth of the cave, a little distance away, showed a breathtakingly beautiful view of a forested valley far below.

"Oh God, not again," Stiles groaned. Magical teleportation was his absolute least favorite way to wake up. Granted, he'd only experienced it once before, but being prodded awake in a mystical undersea bubble by three angry mermen with tridents had pretty much been all the evidence he needed. "This is a dream," Stiles said aloud, trying to convince himself. "I am dreaming. I am going to wake up any minute now and go to school and pass all of my tests."

"This is no dream," a soft, melodic voice said from just behind him.

"Uwahh!" Stiles flailed, spinning to face the voice, and nearly thwacked a tiny, flittering shape with one wayward hand.

The sprightly figure nimbly darted around his fingers, jewel-bright wings flashing.

"Be calm," the… oh god, the _fairy_ said, hovering just out of flailing distance. "We mean you no harm."

"No harm?" Stiles squeaked, squinting at the minute creature before him. It was definitely some sort of fairy – barely bigger than a hummingbird, with huge, doll-like eyes in its tiny, delicate face. It looked basically human other than the fragile dragonfly wings that sprouted from its shoulders, shimmering through the air to keep it aloft. "No harm?" Stiles demanded again. He could hear the way his voice had gone slightly hysterical, but couldn't quite bring himself to care. "I'm in a god-damned cave, and apparently I've been abducted by bloody _Tinker Bell_ , and now I'm going to miss all my tests and my lab and fail A.P. physics, but that's just _fine_ because you don't mean any harm."

The creature's delicate brows drew downward with concern. "We apologize." It said, inclining its head. "We did not intend to alarm you. We are the fair folk, the people of peace, and we bear both a gift and a warning for the leader of the Beacon Hills Pack."

Stiles shot a quick glance into the shadowy recesses of the cave, a bit unnerved by the fairy's use of the plural pronoun, but as far as he could tell they were alone. He took a deep, steadying breath and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Alright. Fine. A gift and a warning for our leader. Fantastic. Why do I always have to be the messenger?"

"Messenger?" The sing-song voice sounded puzzled. "You are no messenger, pack leader. We speak to you directly."

"Excuse me?" Stiles froze, eyes locked on the flittering menace before him. "What do you mean, _pack leader_?"

The fairy tilted its head. "You are the leader of the Beacon Hills pack."

Stiles let out a strangled laugh. "Hah, what? No. Nonononono. You've totally got the wrong guy. You're thinking of Derek. Big, growly, creeps around in dark corners? Or maybe Scott. Puppy eyes, heart of gold, slightly crooked chin?"

"You speak of the alphas," the fairy replied calmly.

"Yes! The alphas! The leaders of the pack."

The fairy waved a tiny, dismissive hand. "No, pack leader. The alphas may supply the power in the pack, but you are the linchpin that holds them together, the voice of reason that lays plans and guides them, are you not?"

Stiles could feel his mouth hanging open, but all his facial muscles had apparently decided to mutiny because, try as he might, he couldn't force it shut again.

"We have not resided in these hills for generations, but like many of our supernatural brethren, the power of the Nemeton has drawn us back. We have come, as we did in the days of old, to pay tribute to the leader of the pack."

Stiles shook his head, trying to force some sound out of his gaping mouth, but the fairy was still talking.

"During our absence, we have heard many stories of the Beacon Hills pack – the phoenix pack that burned and was reborn from the ashes. A pack that, by all the laws of nature and the supernatural, should not exist."

"Hey," Stiles protested, indignation finally spurring him to speak. "Back off. Our pack is awesome."

The fairy inclined her head slightly, bobbing up and down gently in the air like a windblown leaf, "Yes. Awesome in the original sense of the word, for it does indeed inspire awe. The pack wolves are to be expected, and the humans, accepted. But the others? Strange enough for a death-crier to walk amongst the living. Stranger still for one to pledge her loyalty to wolves."

"Lydia is our _friend_ ," Stiles insisted, crossing his arms over his chest.

"And your archer is an Argent, a hunter from an ancient line. She should, by all rights, fight to spill pack blood, not protect it."

"You are so lucky Allison's not here right now," Stiles said. "She would totally kick your ass if she heard you say that."

"And what of the fox who can call lightning from a cloudless sky, or the ancient spirit of vengeance, tamed and trained and brought to heel by the pack."

"Jackson isn't trained," Stiles protested. "He's barely housebroken."

"A banshee, a hunter, a kitsune, and a kanima. Just one of these anomalies in a pack is unheard of, but all together? Completely unbelievable."

"And yet, here we are," Stiles said dryly, wondering where the hell the fairy was going with this.

"And yet," the fairy echoed, giving Stiles a meaningful look, "even more unbelievable are the tales told in hushed voices of a man-child who fights alongside the wolves; a boy with a will strong enough to bind two alphas to him, a spark that burns bright enough to banish a nogitsune's darkness, and a sacrifice that still fights the Nemeton's pull."

Stiles let out a startled bark of laughter.

The fairy fluttered higher until it was directly at eye level with Stiles, and asked, "Do they speak in error?"

"Not exactly." Stiles scrubbed a hand through his hair, still fighting an incredulous grin. "But when you put it like that, it sounds like I'm some sort of superhero or something, and that is some shockingly false advertising. If you want to distil my essence into a few fancy words, try 'frantically flailing' and 'desperately dodging.' Those pretty much sum up how I deal with most of the supernatural shrapnel that flies my way."

"But you have stood directly in the path of such shrapnel many times, sacrificing your own safety for the good of the pack," the fairy contradicted, which, ok, was _technically_ true, but he'd only done it when there'd literally been no other choice. The fairy kept talking, though, giving him no chance to protest. "The alphas are the foundation the pack is built on, but you are the keystone that supports it, that allows it remain strong and whole. Without you, the pack as it stands now would crumble."

"It would not," Stiles started, then was hit with the sudden mental image of what the pack dynamics would look like without him there to intervene. "Ok, there would definitely be more squabbling, and Derek and Lydia would probably glare each other to death over who got the last scoop of chocolate ice cream, but that doesn't mean I'm a...a keystone or whatever. I'm basically just a glorified babysitter trying to stop the terrifyingly strong two-year-olds from accidentally killing each other when they get in a snit. If that's your definition of a leader..."

"A strong, nurturing presence that mediates and guides? That is indeed how we would define leadership. But we waste time on semantics, and we have little time to spare." A hint of worry tainted the fairy's singsong voice. "There is a darkness coming to Beacon Hills."

"Of course there is," Stiles groaned, burying his face in his palms. He squinted through his fingers at the little incandescent ball of bad news. "I don't suppose you have a specific description of this darkness, or a comprehensive list of its strengths and weaknesses? Something other than vaguely threatening hints and enigmatic riddles?" he asked hopefully.

The fairy blinked her abnormally large eyes, and tilted her head as though weighing her words. "First, you must understand that the fair folk do not meddle in the affairs of others. We are friends of few and prey to none, and as such we have maintained neutrality in the ever-present squabbles of our supernatural brethren."

"Ok. You're Switzerland," Stiles prompted when the silence stretched awkwardly long. "Then why bring us this information at all?"

"For two very compelling reasons. First, though many wolves are base and violent, this pack has always been...more. The Hale pack of old extended hospitality to our people during a time of great trial, and though the wolves of that time are gone, Hale blood still claims this land, and our debt is yet unpaid."

Stiles felt his mouth fall open, but before he could ask any of the hundreds of questions that tidbit of information inspired, the fairy continued.

"Second, this threat is not only a danger to your pack, but to the very essence of our supernatural world. The darkness that approaches was once a band of mortal men, but they meddled with powers they should not have touched, and now they move in the twisted shadows of corruption. They claim to be defenders of nature, but they profane all that is natural, trespass on hallowed ground, and defile the rituals they once observed. Now, creatures of myth and magic flee before them, for they leave only wreckage in their wake."

"Well that sounds absolutely charming," Stiles deadpanned, tipping his head back and glaring at the roof of the cave. "I'm so glad they're coming to pay us a visit."

The fairy's eyes narrowed. "Devastation incarnate rages towards your pack, and you jest in the face of such a warning?" she demanded, her melodic lilt suddenly as sharp as a blade.

Crap. The last thing he wanted to do was piss off a probably friendly supernatural creature, he reminded himself sternly. The pack had enough enemies already, and the fairy might look more decorative than threatening, but she had somehow magically transported him from his room to this cave in the middle of who-knew-where, so she probably had a bit more bite to her than the sparkly wings and pixie-dust would suggest. Also, if Stiles did manage to piss her off, he'd probably be hoofing it home, which was not an appealing option.

"No, no. Sorry. I really do appreciate the warning. It's just...we've been dealing with the Nemeton for over two years now, and at this point, I tend to skip past the whole terrified-of-the-new-threat stage and jump straight to bitter resignation." He shrugged and slouched against the rough cave wall. "Does this darkness have a name? It would be an amazingly novel experience to have an actual starting point for my research."

The fairy gave him a long, assessing look, probably reevaluating any pro-Stiles inclinations she'd been fostering, before tilting her head slightly and deigning to respond. "The fair folk call these twisted souls the Lost, but we understand that the packs have a different name for them. Among wolves, they are known as the Order of Silence."

"What?" Stiles demanded, jerking upright at the name. If she'd been human-sized, he would have grabbed onto her shoulders and shaken her in his enthusiasm. As it was, he threw himself forward, his hands involuntarily reaching towards the tiny figure, towards the elusive information she might contain.

A sharp crack sounded and Stiles flew backwards, feet blasted off the ground by an iridescent explosion.

He hit the cave wall cursing, then froze as what had appeared to be a solid wall glittering between himself and the fairy suddenly resolved into countless individual points of light, each one streaking straight at him.

He yelped, throwing his arms up to protect his face, but before the onslaught of enraged fairies made contact, a familiar, lilting voice called, "Stop!"

Stiles breathed in once, twice, then when he still hadn't been hit by the swarm of tiny bodies, he squinted an eye open so he could peer out through the narrow gap between his elbows.

Hundreds of flickering figures hovered inches away from him, still but for their rapidly fluttering wings. Each tiny face sported a murderous glare, and Stiles had no doubt they were ready to pummel him to death in a bout kamikaze fairy rage. It was only that one word, that command to stop, that was holding them at bay.

"Sorry!" Stiles tried after another second of tense silence. He slowly lowered his arms and peered beyond the poised screen of fairy vengeance to locate the tiny figure he'd been talking to. "Uh, I didn't mean to almost squish you?" he offered weakly. "I just got a little overenthusiastic. I've been searching for information on the Order for months now. I swear I wasn't trying to hurt you, I just flail a lot when I get excited."

There was another long beat of silence as the fairy considered Stiles' words, then finally she said, "No, we should apologize, pack leader. We promised no harm would come to you, and that promise stands."

"My queen?" asked a slightly deeper but still distinctly musical voice from somewhere in the glittering throng.

"Go," the – oh God – the fairy _queen_ instructed, "and prepare the gift."

As one, the glittering swarm blinked out of existence, leaving Stiles seemingly alone in the cave with the original fairy.

He swallowed, throat suddenly dry, and let out a very shaky breath.

"We begin to see the truth behind the whispers, pack leader. You are indeed different from the slow, lumbering humans we have dealt with in the past."

Stiles blinked. "Thanks, I think?"

The fairy queen nodded. "It is a compliment. Your…flailing, as you put it, reveals a level of vigor that many humans lack. You and your pack will need such unbridled energy to combat the Lost."

Stiles closed his eyes for a second, trying to organize his thoughts. It was a tough enough task on an ordinary day, and sleep-deprivation, magical transportation, and fairy ambushes were not making the job any easier. He had a thousand questions swirling through his mind, but he was also getting the distinct impression that time was ticking down. He needed to ask the most important questions while he had the chance. Stiles took a deep breath and asked "What can you tell me about the Order?

"Once, they worshiped and respected balance, understanding the inherent power in the give and take between light and darkness, life and death, natural and supernatural. But a tragedy long ago caused them to lose their way, and live now in the shadows of death and worship only darkness."

"That's really poetic and all," Stiles broke in gently, "but something a little more specific would be really helpful. Why are they coming here?"

"Power," the Queen replied. "They seek, as they did before, to harness the power of the Nemeton and bend it to their will."

"As they did before?" Stiles repeated. "But the last time they were here, they shut the Nemeton down."

The fairy inclined her head. "That was the result, but it was not their intention. The intervention of the Hale Pack prevented the completion of the dark rite they were performing. Had they finished the ritual, we believe the Nemeton's power would not have been cut off, but amplified, and, tainted by their work, it would have poisoned all supernatural minds in its thrall. The tainted would have spread the darkness to all others they encountered before their madness drove them to death."

Stiles blinked, processing that for a second. "Like a supernatural ant trap?" he asked, a terrifying picture forming in his head.

"Ant trap?" the fairy asked. "We are not familiar with this concept."

"It's a little plastic thing people put out when they have ants in their house," Stiles explained. "It's full of poisonous bait. When the ants eat it, they die, and if they carry the bait back to their nest and feed it to the queen, it can kill the whole colony."

"In essence, then, they are the same," the queen acknowledged.

"So we're talking about a supernatural genocide here," Stiles said, stomach churning with unease. "They're going for total extermination."

"Precisely," agreed the fairy.

Stiles cursed. "How much time do we have before they get here?" he asked.

"Days," the fairy replied. "Perhaps weeks if you are very lucky."

"Great. That's just…fabulous. Really." He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. "How did the Order managed to shut down the Nemeton last time? If we could figure out how to turn it off before they get here, we might avert this whole disaster, right?"

The fairy shook her head. "Stopping the flow of the Nemeton's power at this point will do nothing to prevent their arrival. It is, in fact, the first step of their ritual, and completing it would only assist them in achieving their ultimate goal."

Stiles cursed again, this time with even more feeling. "So how do we stop them?"

"Their ritual will require a blood payment, and it is strongest if it comes from those tied to this land. When the Lost came before, they sacrificed members of the pack. It stands to reason they will attempt to do so again. Your pack must stand strong and fight together, like the Hale pack of old."

"But Derek said they were thirty wolves strong!" Stiles protested. "We've got four wolves, three humans, a kitsune, and a banshee. How the hell are we supposed to fight them off with less than a third of the last pack's strength?"

"It's not the size of the pack that matters," the Fairy stated, and despite his rising panic, Stiles had to literally bite his tongue to stop his automatic 'that's what she said' reflex from kicking in. "It is the bonds between them that determine its strength. Your pack is strong, and together you can stand against the coming darkness."

Stiles took a breath, intending to demand a complete explanation of tactics, strategies, and weapons, but instead squeaked a very undignified squeak as six new fairies popped into existence right in front of him in a burst of shimmering light.

"This whole experience has really not been good for my heart," he said, clutching at his chest and staring wide-eyed at the newcomers. "If I have a heart attack, you are picking up the medical bills."

Ignoring him, the fairies floated towards their queen, stopping an inch in front of her. They were carrying a long, wooden box between them like pallbearers at a funeral, and with a quick, practiced flourish, they opened the lid.

The queen gestured at the box. "We present this talisman as a token of our good faith," she said, and Stiles leaned forward to see a thin, leather cord attached to a rounded disk of what looked like ivory. It was carved with intricate symbols, swirling and connecting in a tightly woven pattern. "The magics the Lost wield are powerful, but in their folly, they have forgotten that the strength of magic often lies in its intent. A drop of blood freely given may have more power than a life's worth forcibly taken. Will you give a drop of your blood to protect yourself and your pack?" The fairy asked, pulling a tiny dagger from a miniature sheath on her belt.

Stiles hesitated only a second. He wasn't sure he really trusted the fairy, but he needed anything that would give him an edge in a fight against the Order. With a quiet nod, he held out his hand.

The fairy pricked his finger, and at her direction, he smeared the drop of blood across the symbols, and felt the talisman suddenly warm beneath his touch.

"Now it knows you," the queen intoned. "Wear it always, and it should offer some measure of protection against the dark arts of the Lost."

"Will it work for someone else?" Stiles asked, carefully pulling the cord over his head. Stiles shivered as the ivory settled against his skin, resting beside his heart. It almost seemed to be humming, emitting a gentle, soothing vibration just beyond the range of his hearing. "Could I give it to one of my friends? Would it protect them?"

"It knows you," the queen repeated, "And will protect only you. It is up to you to protect your pack. The time has come for you to return to them. We apologize for keeping you so long. May the lights of many sunrises brighten your future, pack leader," the queen said, raising her hand in a regal gesture.

"Wait!" Stiles called, desperate for more information, tongue burning with questions, but it was already too late. As the queen's hand fell, the air around Stiles crackled and the cave winked out of sight.

"You talked to a _fairy_ ," Scott said again, as though he might be able to believe it if he repeated it often enough.

"For the seventeenth time, _yes_ ," Stiles acknowledged, leaning his head back against the arm of the couch and gently prodding at a tender bruise on his cheek. "You sound ridiculously incredulous about it, considering you're a _werewolf_."

"Yeah, but you spoke to the _queen of the fairies_ ," Scott said, eyes still comically round, even though the pack had been sitting in Stiles' living room discussing it for the past twenty minutes.

"I didn't _know_ she was the queen until I freaked out about the Order and got myself tackled by her eight-thousand tiny fairy ninja guards. But yes, as it turns out, her continual use of 'we' was accurate both in the royal and plural senses of the word," Stiles grumbled.

"Was that when you hit your face?" Jackson asked.

"No," Stiles said intending to leave it at that. A sea of raised eyebrows surrounded him. He sighed. "I tripped when they fairy-ported me back here and brained my head on the coffee table, ok? Grace has never been one of my many stellar attributes."

A hand holding a towel-wrapped icepack appeared above his head.

"Here."

Stiles craned his neck back and blinked up at Derek. "Your scowls are far less impressive when I can see up your nostrils," he decided, reaching up and taking the ice.

Derek snorted, but still dropped his cool hand to the top of Stiles' head, and Stiles was somehow unsurprised when the sharp throbbing in his cheek dulled to a manageable ache. He fought back the urge to lean into the touch. "Thanks," he said instead, focusing on settling the icepack carefully across his bruise.

"Can we please stay focused, here?" Lydia demanded, voice almost as sharp as the lethal heels of her stilettos. "The fairies said the Order is coming. Did they tell you where they are now?"

Stiles frowned. "No. They just said they'd be here in days, or weeks at the most, which is really neither helpful nor specific if we want to try to head them off before they get here. But I was thinking, the gnomes by the bridge a month ago – they were the only survivors of a massacre, right? That could have been the Order."

Lydia tilted her head, considering, and Allison started to nod.

"That makes sense," Isaac agreed. "You said the fairies described them as 'devastation incarnate' right?"

Stiles nodded, careful not to dislodge his ice. "Yeah, and they also said that supernatural creatures flee before them, which could help explain the recent influx of crazy critters we've been seeing. I mean, I know the Nemeton pulls them here, but it's been active for more than two years, and we've never seen this many creatures coming at us at once before."

"So we've got a group of homicidal lunatics headed our way, herding a wave of angry and confused monsters towards us? Sounds like an exciting Thursday," Kira concluded.

Stiles groaned at the reminder of the classes they were currently missing, and how dead he was going to be when he got back to school. Of course, metaphorical-school-dead was infinitely preferable to actually-killed-dead, so he supposed he should really try to appreciate the fairy's warning a little more.

"Hey!" he protested, thoughts rudely interrupted as his legs were lifted off the couch without warning. Granted, he _was_ being a bit of an ass, taking up the whole couch with his melodramatic sprawl, but he'd been kidnapped by fairies this morning and if he miraculously managed to survive their portended doom, his physics teacher would probably murder him for slacking. He felt like he'd earned a bit of space to sulk.

Stiles lifted his head enough to see that it was Derek holding his legs aloft as he claimed the other side of the couch for himself. With a resigned sigh, he shifted, expecting Derek to shove his feet to the floor, but instead Derek settled Stiles' legs over his own lap, and casually folded his arms across them.

Stiles felt his breath hitch. He knew it meant nothing. It was just pack instinct – an alpha's need to assure himself that his threatened packmate was ok – but it was still ridiculously hard to ignore the warm pressure of Derek's thighs under his calves, and the seemingly mindless way the alpha was rubbing his thumb over the denim covering Stiles' shin.

"So we know they're coming," Allison said, jolting Stiles' thoughts away from Derek's hands, "But we still don't know what they look like or when, exactly, they'll get here. We have one talisman that the fairies claim will protect Stiles from some dark magics, which leaves the rest of us completely exposed, and the only advice we have for fighting them is to stick together and stay strong?"

"That pretty much sums it up," Stiles sighed.

Scott gave a wry smile. "Sounds like it's time to institute the buddy system."

"The what?" Allison asked.

"You know, the buddy system," Scott said. "Everyone has an assigned partner, and you don't go anywhere without them. I think it's one of those Boy Scout things."

"I got kicked out of Boy Scouts," Stiles lamented. "I made one tiny mistake, and suddenly no troop would take me."

"Didn't you blow up a porta-potty?" Scott asked, tilting his head like he was trying to remember, "While it was occupied?

"The details are unimportant," Stiles said, waving a dismissive hand.

"Focus," Lydia snapped, reaching out to smack the top of Stiles' head.

"The buddy system's a good idea," Derek said. "Actually, we should probably stay together as much as possible until this blows over."

"Are we talking slumber parties?" Kira asked with a laugh.

"We're talking safety in numbers," Derek said, rolling his eyes.

"So yes," Allison grinned. "Slumber parties."

"We won't all fit at one house," Scott said. "I can host a group at my place. That way I can keep an eye on my mom, too."

"Some people can stay here, too," Stiles offered. "My dad wouldn't mind, and I don't want to leave him alone, either."

"Allison, do you think your dad would be willing to stay at Scott's as well?" Derek asked. "It would be good to have another armed human at both bases."

"I think so," Allison nodded, pulling out her phone. "I'll ask him."

"Then let's have Allison, Isaac, Kira, and Chris stay with Scott," Derek said. "And Danny, Jackson, Lydia and I will stay with Stiles."

"Perfect," Stiles said, and just managed to suppress a hysterical giggle. Why the hell was this his life?

Lydia slammed her hand down on Stiles' desk hard enough that he flailed and actually fell out of his chair.

"You're going downstairs," she declared.

"Excuse me?" he asked, peering up at her from his newly lowered position, which had probably been the point.

"Downstairs," Lydia said in a tone that brooked no argument. "Pack movie night. There will be Avengers and there will be tequila."

"No." Stiles blinked. "I'm fighting evil."

Lydia narrowed her eyes.

"Ok, I'll admit that there is no actual fighting going on right now," Stiles conceded. Despite the fairy's warnings of imminent doom, two weeks had come and gone with no sign yet of the Order's presence. Stiles' gaze skittered around his mess of a room, past crumpled papers and haphazardly stacked books. "But I'm _researching_ how to fight evil," he decided.

Lydia raised one manicured eyebrow and looked meaningfully at the map tacked above Stiles' desk. Stiles looked at it, too, at the manic mass of threads, thumbtacks, and clippings, each marking a possible Order attack. It had taken endless hours of scouring the internet and the judicious use of his dad's database login, but, reading between the lines Stiles had managed to identify fifty-three incidents in the last four months that seemed to fit the Order's profile.

Unfortunately, there was no straightforward pattern Stiles could discern in the movements, no clear east-to-west line that would reveal where they were coming from or when they would arrive. With locations ranging from New York City to San Diego, it was possible he'd made mistakes when he'd identified the cases, but each time he thought about throwing one out, he'd find another hint that it really had been a Pied Piper murdered in Las Vegas, or that it definitely was the remains of a shattered Golem found in Rapid City. He hadn't spotted a pattern yet, but that didn't mean there wasn't one.

When Stiles was a kid, he'd fallen in love with magic eye pictures – boxes of incomprehensible dots and dashes, splashes of senseless color that, when looked at in the right way, would suddenly resolve into a perfectly clear picture of a penguin or a sailboat or a shark. He squinted at the map, now, eyes slightly unfocused, willing it to give up its secrets. If he just looked at it _right_ , he was sure he'd figure it out.

Lydia gave him a level look, and Stiles deflated, letting his head sink back until he was completely sprawled out on the carpet, feet still propped up on the seat of his chair. "Fine. I am _attempting_ to research how to fight evil, but evil is being a sneaky bastard, and it's not going particularly well."

"Stiles," Lydia said, almost gently. "You've been cooped up in here for the last two weeks."

"I go outside," he protested.

"Only for school, and even then you're on your phone researching. You're barely eating. You haven't slept. The bags under your eyes are over TSA weight limits. This is an intervention. You need a break, so we're going downstairs. The whole pack is coming over. We're going watch the Avengers and do shots of Patron whenever something explodes."

Stiles could have told her the research was a coping mechanism - that the books and the internet and the endless search for answers were the only things keeping him sane at this point. He could have told her it was pure torture living in this house when the oblivious object of his unrequited affections was sleeping on his couch. He could have complained of the undiluted frustration that came with not really knowing what they were up against and not being able to find out.

Instead, he said, "You're telling me I'm overworked, underfed, and sleep deprived, and you think _tequila_ is the solution?"

"And Chris Evans' ass in workout pants, which could probably be used to end wars if we weaponized it."

"Isn't that basically the plot of the first Captain America movie?" Stiles asked.

"More or less." Lydia tilted her head. "Technically tequila _is_ a solution, you know."

Stiles stuck his tongue out. "Puns are the lowest form of wit."

Lydia smirked. "I know. That's why you love them so much."

"I really, really do," Stiles admitted and sighed in defeat. "Damn you and your hellish knowledge of all my weaknesses. Fine! One movie, one drink – I will not be fooled into trying to out-drink a werewolf again, damn it – and one objectifying glance at Chris Evans' backside, then I'm coming back here and figuring this out. I'm so close..."

Lydia rolled her eyes. "You've been saying that for over a week. Up," she ordered, and shoved him in the direction of the bathroom as soon as he gained vertical integrity. "Shower. I sent Derek, Danny, and Jackson to the store for snacks and alcohol, and the rest of the pack will be here in twenty minutes."

"You do realize we will be underage-drinking in a sheriff's house, right?" Stiles pointed out, grabbing his towel.

Lydia gave a careless shrug. "Your dad's on the night shift, and I like to live dangerously. Besides, I'm pretty sure he'd just be happy to see you outside your room for once. Off with you."

"Have I told you lately how amazingly attractive you are when you're in boss-mode?"

Lydia quirked an eyebrow. "Surprisingly, no – which is going to be one of our many topics of discussion this evening, once you're cleaned up and outside your research-cave."

"I don't suppose there's any way to avoid that?" he asked without much hope.

"Nope," Lydia answered with a determined glint in her eyes. "You've been sad. You're telling me everything. But first, tequila and Tom Hiddleston in skin-tight armor."

Stiles tried to picture the way the night was going to go – the amazing movie, the alcohol buzz, the warm press of Derek's knee against his thigh as they sat together on the couch…

"Right," Stiles said, simultaneously fighting down panic and stupid, pointless optimism. "This is going to be great."

He showered quickly, and had just changed into fresh clothes when the doorbell rang.

"Did we order pizza?" Stiles called as he snagged his wallet off his desk and took the stairs two at a time.

"No, but I did give Jackson and Danny a pretty long list of snacks," Lydia answered from the kitchen as Stiles skidded to a stop in the entryway. "Maybe their hands are full."

Stiles pulled the door open.

It wasn't Jackson. It wasn't Danny. It wasn't Derek or Scott or any of the other pack members he'd been expecting.

Instead, it was a dark-haired woman and a pale-haired man, both in long, black robes with swirling tattoos patterning almost all of their visible skin.

"Oh, shit," Stiles managed as the woman's hand darted toward him, something in her fist flashing as it caught the light of the setting sun.

He felt a sharp pain in his neck, and everything went black.

Consciousness was a slippery, insubstantial thing. Stiles reached for it, opening his eyes, but it dodged sideways and skittered off at the last second, light and sound swirling around his head in a woozy sort of dance. He closed his eyes and swallowed, vaguely aware of a cottony, unpleasant taste in his mouth, and much more vividly aware of a treacherous lurch in his gut and burning bile at the back of his throat.

What the hell had he been drinking last night?

Whatever it was, he'd clearly had too much of it. This wasn't even a hangover. He was still _drunk_ , for fuck's sake. It was probably all Isaac's fault. The guy might look like a Baroque angel - all glossy golden curls and wide, innocent eyes - but he had a mischievous streak a mile wide and an uncanny ability to convince Stiles to do shots.

Stiles needed to get up, drink some water and find a spoon so he could murder Isaac with it. Then all he'd need was a quiet, dark corner to die in.

He squinted an eye open cautiously and regretted it at once. Maybe unconsciousness wasn't such a bad thing. It might be full of darkness and oblivion, but at least it wasn't _spinning_.

A thought in a distant corner of his mind niggled, a vaguely unsettled feeling, like there was something he was forgetting, something important. A test he needed to study for, or a project he needed to research, or –

A tattooed face, a trailing black robe, and the glint of a hypodermic needle.

 _Fuck_ , Stiles thought, adrenaline punching through his system and burning away the drug-induced haze. He would have cursed aloud, but as it turned out, his mouth didn't just taste cottony; there was a literal wad of cotton, or some sort of cloth at least, stuffed behind his teeth and held in place with a haphazardly tied gag. It was probably for the best. As satisfying as it would have been to shout, Stiles really didn't want his kidnappers to know he was awake.

With a rapid glance, Stiles took stock of his situation. He was lying on a bench seat in what appeared to be the back of a van, gagged and bound with his arms bent awkwardly behind him. It was dark outside the windows, though he caught fragmented glimpses of the nearly full moon through the branches of passing trees. They were in some sort of forest – probably the preserve, though Stiles had no idea how long he'd been out. They could just as easily be in Oregon for all he really knew.

Another bench seat blocked his view of the rest of the van, but after a few seconds of careful maneuvering, he managed to prop himself up on his elbows and cautiously peeked over it.

There were two people up front. Judging by the little Stiles could see of them around their seats, they were likely the same friendly neighborhood muggers who had shown up uninvited on his doorstep and stabbed him in the neck with a tranquilizer.

They must be members of the Order of Silence. Sure, it was possible they were from some other freaky cult of cruelty, but the likelihood that two nefarious, pseudo-religious factions were out for Hale Pack blood was…actually, it was probably higher than Stiles was comfortable contemplating, but definitely still on the unlikely end of the spectrum. So, going with the odds, this was their fairy-foretold doom.

Stiles glanced down at the bench seat in front of him and felt his stomach clench as a beam of moonlight splashed across ashen skin, fresh blood, and strawberry-blonde curls.

 _Lydia_.

She was bound and gagged like him, but her eyes were still closed, limbs limp and unresisting. An angry, purpling bruise marred her cheek and a trail of blood drew a dark line from her split eyebrow down her temple and into her hair. There was blood on her clothes, too, though from his vantage point Stiles couldn't tell if she had any more injuries.

He clenched his jaw, fighting the instinct to move towards her. It was almost physically painful not to at least try to help, but there was no way he could do anything without drawing attention.

A guttural stream of something that sounded like Russian cut over the low hum of the van's engine, drawing Stiles' attention. Cursing, he was pretty sure. He'd heard enough cursing in his life that he thought he'd probably recognize the flavor of it in any language.

The voice was unfamiliar, deep and masculine, and it broke off with a pained hiss of indrawn breath every time the van bounced over a pothole.

"The bitch better not have made us late," the man said, switching to strongly accented English.

"Relax. It took less than ten minutes to subdue her," a female voice replied in crisp, London-tinged syllables.

The guy snorted. "Ten minutes and half a liter of my blood."

Stiles felt a fierce flash of pride at that. These bastards may have taken him by surprise, but Lydia was an entirely different story, and she'd been in the kitchen. With _knives_.

"Barely a scratch," the woman dismissed. "Stop whining."

"A scratch?" he scoffed. "I bleed through the bandage!" Stiles saw him raise a clumsily wrapped forearm.

"You'd better not be bleeding on the seats," she replied, slowing to turn the van onto another, bumpier path. "Moiran will not be pleased."

"She'll be more angry if we're late," the man grunted, then hissed again as the van bounced over another rough patch. Maybe his arm wasn't the only place Lydia had managed to stab.

"We have time," the woman soothed. "It's over three hours until midnight, we've already crossed the spell line, and we've nearly reached the axial point." She tapped a lit screen on the dashboard displaying a pinned destination on Google Maps. "Focus on finishing the amulets, and whatever you do, _don't_ get any of your blood on them. We can take care of the rest when we get there."

The man grunted again – clearly his preferred method of communication – and began fiddling with something in his lap.

Stiles sank back down, mind flying rapidly from one detail to the next, connecting dots and slotting puzzle pieces into place to construct a comprehensive, if crude, picture of his situation.

The Order of Silence was here, the Nemeton-fueled supernatural genocide was going down at midnight, his pack was in danger, and once again Stiles was bound and gagged and _completely fucking useless_.

Panic clawed at the back of his throat, making it almost impossible to breathe around the gag in his mouth. He _hated_ being kidnapped, and he hated it even more when the people he loved were in danger, too. The universe was a bastard, and Stiles was going to be voicing some pretty loud complaints whenever he managed to get rid of the damned gag. He wrenched at his wrists in futile frustration, then froze when his fingertips brushed the dangling ends of a rope.

Suddenly, he could hear the ghost of Scott's voice; feel the muscle memory taking over from countless hours of practice.

He wasn't helpless. He could do this. He could get free, and then…

Well, first things first, he needed to escape. There would be time once he had access to all of his limbs to figure out what came next.

Taking a steadying breath through his nose, he closed his eyes, searching for the focus he'd developed over months of training. He could almost pretend he was in Scott's room, that this was just another practice session, and at any moment Scott would jump in with a helpful suggestion or Melissa would walk in and embarrass them both.

Curling his hand, Stiles slipped his fingers along the slick length of nylon, searching for the knot that held his bonds together. Stiles' hands were already half numb, joints aching, but he pushed and pulled at the cord, testing for any sign of weakness. The knot was at an uncomfortable angle, but Stiles worked on autopilot, twisting and turning, loosening the cord bit by bit in a way that had become second-nature sometime over the past several months.

It took less than a minute. The rope slipped, the tension around his wrists eased, and Stiles wrenched his hands free. After that, it took only seconds to untie the cords around his ankles, then Stiles pulled the gag loose with a vicious yank and spit the sodden cloth out in disgust.

He stared down at the tangled lengths of rope where they'd fallen in jumbled loops on the van's floor. All that training with Scott had worked. It had actually _worked_. He resisted the urge to pump a victory fist in the air and sent Scott, wherever he was, a mental high-five instead.

He was _free_.

Well, ok, no. Free might be a bit of a stretch. He was still in a moving vehicle driven by lunatics who were at the very least armed with industrial strength tranquilizers and insanity, but he was _untied_ at least.

He felt in his pocket and let out a relieved breath as his fingers closed around the key ring Derek had given him for his birthday. If they'd searched him, they must have assumed, as Derek had intended, that the keys were simply keys.

Stiles slotted the blades between his fingers and anchored them with the wrapped lanyard as Derek had shown him. After a month of regular training, the weapon felt natural in his hand, and the muted light glinting off the sharp edges helped calm his beating heart.

He was armed. He was unbound. Now, it was time to come up with a plan.

Stiles weighed his options. The Order members clearly thought he was unconscious and tied up. If he attacked now, he'd have surprise on his side. Surprise was a huge advantage, and he needed any advantage he could get.

On the other hand, there were two of them and only one of Stiles, and while he had many stellar attributes, stealth had never been high on the list. With Lydia's bench seat between them, it was highly unlikely that he would be able to sneak up on the bastards unnoticed. And then there was the potential for a car crash. If he startled the driver, she might swerve into a tree or roll the van, or worse. It might work in his favor, incapacitating one or both of the Order members, but it was equally likely that he and Lydia would end up injured instead. More injured, he amended, remembering Lydia's bloodied and bruised face.

Before he made up his mind, the van slowed, coming to a stop in a sparsely wooded glade. The woman pulled a cell phone out of her pocket, thumbed the screen a few times, and put it on the dashboard.

The speakerphone rang once, then there was a click as someone answered on the other end.

"Report." The voice was a low and terse, but Stiles thought it might be a woman speaking.

"We're here," the driver announced, unbuckling her seatbelt.

"Good," the phone answered. "You have the sacrifices?"

Stiles tensed. These asshats really were planning on killing the pack.

"Yes. It went smoothly," the woman responded, ignoring the snort of disgust from the man, who was gingerly unbuckling his seatbelt with his bandaged arm. "They were unguarded."

"As I predicted they would be." The voice sounded smug. "It's shameful, really. The Hale pack of old would have at least attempted to protect their weaker members. This fledgling pack is barely past its milk teeth." There was a noise that sounded like a disappointed sigh. "At least they have enough members for the ritual to work."

"Were the other captures successful?" the woman asked.

"Yes," the phone confirmed. "All axial points have checked in. We're ready to begin the first stage."

"So we go dark," the man said, speaking to the phone for the first time.

"We go dark." the voice agreed, and the line went dead.

Stiles tilted his head, trying to process what he'd just heard. The most alarming word was "sacrifices," but he'd already known that the Order was out for pack blood. He was more concerned with the other hints and questions raised by the conversation.

Who was the woman on the phone? These two had mentioned a name earlier. Moria? Morgan? Something. Maybe she was their leader, or at least the leader of this particular group. Or maybe she was just another lackey one rung higher on the Order's social ladder than his current captors. Without knowing more about the Order itself, it was impossible to tell.

And what were the axial points? It sounded like something from a math textbook, though he didn't think he'd ever heard the term before. On the other hand, he had heard the phrase "go dark," but why would these guys be cutting off communication when there were still three hours left until midnight?

Stiles was so caught up in his contemplations that he all but forgot about the immediate threat until he heard the click of the van's side door.

Time had obviously run out. He still had no plan, no real idea what to do, but he pulled his legs under him, his whole body a coiled spring, keys clutched tight in his fist. If he was going to go down, he was going to go down stabbing something.

The door slid open, framing the Order woman's robed silhouette against the pale moonlight.

"Hi!" Stiles said, teeth flashing in a manic grin, "I'd like to lodge a complaint with your HR department." He lunged straight at her shocked face.

In their early days training together, Derek had spent a solid week trying to break Stiles of his tendency to ramble while he fought. Stiles had stubbornly resisted and eventually Derek gave up. Privately, Stiles thought it was because he'd realized the value inherent in the tactic. Not only did the inane babble help him focus, it also annoyed and distracted his opponents.

Case in point, Stiles thought as the woman stumbled backwards with a startled curse, giving him just enough room to scramble out of the van. Her surprise only bought him a heartbeat, though, and before he'd gained his footing, she was already springing forward, fist swinging unerringly towards his head.

Stiles let out an alarmed squawk, but his body reacted without conscious thought in a way that had become base instinct sometime during the last year. He ducked under her arm, spun sideways, and swept a foot out to catch her across the shins.

"I know it's tough to recruit qualified personnel in this economy," Stiles continued as the woman leapt backwards, nimbly avoiding the blow, "But really, kidnapping is not the way to go."

She pulled an archaic knife out of the folds of her robe.

"Yeah, threats and coercion aren't really viable recruitment strategies either," Stiles quipped.

The woman charged, knife slashing through the air.

Stiles darted sideways, trying to avoid the outstretched blade, but bright line of pain bloomed along his ribs, the telltale burn of metal biting through skin. He swore and kicked backwards without turning, just managing to tangle one of his feet between hers.

"That was rude," he panted, wrenching her legs out from under her and trying not to think about the sticky wetness he could feel flowing down his side.

She fell heavily, knife clattering out of her hand as she hit the dirt.

"I mean, we've only just met," Stiles rambled as he knocked her blade away. "I don't even know your name." He straightened, gritting his teeth against the pain, and turned to face her. "You cannot, in good conscience, stab someone without at least a proper introduction."

She was already back on her feet, robes swirling as she spun and kicked him. The blow landed just above his hip. Stiles absorbed the momentum as Derek had taught him, allowing it to spin him in a tight circle right back towards his attacker.

He needed to end this, needed to free Lydia and find Derek and Scott and the rest of his pack before these homicidal crackpots could finish what they'd started. He brought his keys up in a vicious arc, aiming for her eyes.

The woman jerked back, and Stiles' blades missed her face by millimeters, catching instead on the flowing fabric of her robes. He wrenched his hand away, slicing through the material and drew his arm back to strike again.

She was already dropping down, falling under the reach of his blades. Expecting a low, sweeping kick, Stiles stumbled backwards into a defensive stance.

He watched in confusion as the woman continued to crumple, landing in an awkward pile of limbs and billowing fabric. Stiles stared, trying to predict her next move.

She was completely still, not a muscle twitched, and Stiles held his breath for a solid three seconds, eyes never leaving her form.

"What the hell?" he demanded, blinking uncomprehendingly at her immobile form. "I didn't even touch her…"

Before he had time to finish his thought, a hand settled roughly on his shoulder and another grabbed his wrist, twisting it violently behind his back.

" _Shit_ ," Stiles swore. "I forgot there were two of you."

Even as he spoke, his body reacted, his Derek-trained reflexes taking over again. He slammed his heel down on his attacker's foot and chopped his free hand back towards the man's groin. As the guy hunched reflexively to protect his junk, Stiles brought an elbow up to connect hard with his chin. By the time Stiles trapped the arm still draped over his shoulder, dropped his center of gravity, and twisted forward, the man was unbalanced enough that he was easy to throw. He sailed over Stiles' shoulder and crashed head-first into the van, then hit the dirt with a heavy thunk.

"Uh…" Stiles looked back and forth between the two robed figures sprawled on the ground. "What just happened?" Neither one answered. Stiles blinked. "Did I just…win?"

The woman was utterly silent and motionless, lying exactly where she'd fallen, arms and legs splayed at angles that made Stiles uncomfortable just looking at them. The man twitched.

"Right." Stiles shook his head and retrieved the ropes he'd been tied up with out of the van. "No celebrating yet. You bastards are sneaky."

Stiles made quick work of restraining the man, thankful that all his practice slipping knots meant he'd also learned how to tie them, then cautiously approached the woman. He still had no idea why she'd collapsed, and he wasn't taking any chances.

With a nudge of his foot, he flipped her over, braced for an attack, but she rolled easily, limbs limp and unresisting and flopped onto her back. Her face was completely blank, mouth slack, and eyes closed.

She wasn't breathing.

"What the ever loving _fuck_?" Stiles demanded, knowing there was no one conscious to respond. He stared at her for a long minute, mind searching for an answer, then shook his head and scrubbed his hands over his face.

Maybe she'd had an aneurism. Maybe she'd had an extremely rapid heart attack. Maybe it didn't matter, because he was wasting time staring at an evil dead lady's body while his friends and the whole supernatural world were in jeopardy.

"You might look dead, lady," he muttered, flipping the woman back onto her stomach, "but I don't trust you or your apparent mortality as far as I can throw you." He hogtied her and emptied both their pockets to make sure they weren't packing any surprises. They had a few knives, a phone each, though neither had signal, and a set of car keys. He turned back to the van.

"Lydia?" he called as he scooted inside. He reached out and shook her shoulder. Her head lolled loosely, showing no sign of life.

Stiles tensed, fear tracing a cold finger down his spine. Holding his breath, he pulled the gag from her mouth and leaned close, listening hard.

He couldn't hear anything but the frantic thrum of his own heart in his ears.

She wasn't…She wasn't breathing. Oh, _god_ , she wasn't _breathing_. Stiles cursed and pressed a suddenly shaking hand against her throat, searching for a pulse.

Nothing.

"No," Stiles groaned under his breath, moving his trembling fingers to the other side of her neck.

Still nothing.

Desperate, he used one key to slash her bonds and felt both her wrists, then pressed his ear against her chest, listening for a heartbeat, a breath, anything.

There was only silence.

"No!" His voice broke on the syllable, rough and ragged, and he drew in a shuddering gasp. "You promised me Avengers and tequila. You promised me a lecture on my mopes, damn it. You're not…" He swallowed thickly. "I really need you right now, you brilliant asshole. Please wake up. Please. You can't be–"

He clamped his jaw shut, biting off the word that was making his stomach roil. She was still warm, still pliable in his arms. Weren't bodies supposed to be cold and stiff? Weren't you supposed to be able to tell when someone was…when they'd…"God _damn_ it."

He wanted to punch something, wanted to bite and claw and maim.

Instead, he flipped Lydia onto her back, tipped her chin up to clear her airway, and pressed the heels of his palm down against her breastbone in the rapid rhythm of CPR.

"That won't save her."

Stiles froze for a moment startled by the roughly accented words. He spared a glance at the bound man, just a fraction of a second, long enough to see that he'd regained consciousness but was still securely trussed and lying on the dirt.

"She won't wake," the man insisted, harsh syllables scraping like nails over Stiles' already raw nerves.

"Shut up." Stiles' voice sounded hollow, echoing in his own ears. He knew the statistics, knew the man was probably right, that CPR was only a stop gap measure meant to keep the brain oxygenated until the paramedics arrived with their defibrillators and adrenaline injections and expertise. The likelihood of restarting her heart with his hands alone was just this side of zero, and there were no paramedics coming, no way for them to get here, wherever here was, in time to make a difference. But he couldn't stand by and do nothing. He had to at least _try_.

"She is already under." the man continued, a cracked laugh catching at the edge of his voice. "She will never wake again."

"Shut _up_ ," Stiles rasped, clinging to the edges of his control.

"She will die, like you, like your pack, and all the filthy creatures who dare to defile the laws of nature."

The words hit him like a physical blow. Stiles' restraint snapped, and he was clawing his way out of the van, determined to kick the smug smirk right off the bastard's face.

He was nearly to the man when his brain caught up with his body. He froze.

"Will die."

"What?" the man asked, eyebrows drawing down at Stiles' rapid shift in mood.

"You said she _will_ die. That means she's not already dead."

Several expressions flitted across the man's face, before he controlled his features and sighed dramatically. "English," he dismissed with a shrug made awkward by the bonds holding him. "It is a clumsy language, yes?"

"No," Stiles shook his head, turning back towards the van, back towards Lydia. He knew what he'd read in the man's face, the regret at giving away too much. "No, you meant it." His mind was spinning, fast but frustratingly ineffective, like tires searching for traction in slick mud. He needed more information; needed pieces to put together. He closed his eyes, trying to remember anything that might be a clue. "You said she was _under_ , not that she was dead. Under what?" Then it clicked. "A _spell_. One of you said something about a spell line earlier. Is that why…?"

Stiles spun to face the motionless tattooed woman; the woman who had collapsed inexplicably and who, like Lydia, lay limp and lifeless on the ground.

"She must have been protected," he said, working through the problem, "but something happened, something that took that protection away, and now she's under the spell, too."

He dropped to his knees next to the woman, straining to remember the moments before her collapse. They had been fighting. She'd kicked him and then…

He flipped her over, and gave a triumphant shout as he saw the slices in her robes near the neckline where his blades had shredded the fabric. "She must have been wearing something – some kind of charm." Unconsciously, he lifted his fingers to brush the warm weight of the fairy queen's gift through the fabric of his t-shirt. "Some kind of protective talisman."

"No," the man denied, but Stiles was already scouring the dirt with his fingers, scanning the ground with sharp eyes. He saw it almost at once, a dull gleam in the moonlight, and snatched it out of the dust.

The braided leather strap held a metal ring with twisting lines tracing intricate patterns over its surface. It seemed crude, somehow, when he compared it to his own warm ivory talisman, but he could feel an echo of the same power etched into the churning whirls.

Stiles turned his eyes on the man. "You must be protected, too."

"You're wrong," the guy ground out, thrashing against his bonds, muscles straining.

"There's one way to find out for sure." Stiles leaned over and grabbed the man by the hair, dragging his head back with one hand as he fished inside the neckline of his robe with the other. Stiles' fingers found corded leather, and he pulled the necklace free revealing a twin to the twisted talisman he already held.

"I would say I'm sorry about this," Stiles drawled, carefully slipping one of his keys between his fingers, "but I'm not." A deft movement of the blade sliced the cords and the man immediately went limp. Stiles let him fall face first in the dirt, then shuddered, scrubbing the hand that had touched the man's hair against his jeans as though he could rid himself of any lingering crazy through simple friction. He knew it was irrational, but it still made him feel better somehow.

Pushing himself to his feet, Stiles stumbled towards the van, both talismans clasped tightly in his fist. He scooted in next to Lydia, and held his breath as he looped one of the necklaces around her neck. With fumbling fingers, he retied the severed strands, careful to follow the same braided pattern in case the magic depended on it. He finished the last knot, and straightened up, hope and anxiety roiling in his stomach like a storm-tossed sea.

"Lydia?"

She didn't move. Stiles re-adjusted the necklace so it lay firmly against her skin, traced the length of each of the necklace's strands to make sure he'd completed the pattern, and tightened the knots.

"Lydia?" he tried again.

She remained as still as a corpse.

"Damn it!" Stiles cursed, scrubbing both hands over his face in frustration. There must be something he was missing, another step to make the protective magic kick in…

With sudden clarity, he remembered the activation of his own talisman, the tiny drop of blood that had made the ivory warm to his touch. There was no need for a fairy-wielded dagger this time; Lydia was already covered in blood – blood she had sacrificed in self-defense. Stiles carefully picked up the talisman and, hope clogging his throat, dabbed it against the bloody cut at her brow.

Lydia's eyes flew open, and she came to swinging. One of her fists connected with Stiles' jaw and he fell backwards, narrowly avoiding the outstretched nails of her other hand.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he soothed, both palms up in a gesture of peace.

Lydia stilled, blinking around at the van's dark interior in confusion.

Stiles' jaw was throbbing – Lydia knew how to throw a punch – but it did nothing to dampen the smile that tugged at his lips. She really was okay – awake, and alive and as fierce as ever.

"Stiles?" She demanded, sitting up and shaking her head to clear it. "Where are we?"

"In the preserve, I think." Stiles sighed. "How much do you remember?"

She tilted her head, sharp eyes scanning her surroundings and taking stock even as she efficiently listed off events. "Two freaks with ink fetishes knocked you out at the door. The Order, I presume?"

Stiles nodded. The man's diatribe about "filthy creatures" and "defiling the laws of nature" had basically confirmed it.

"They cornered me in the kitchen. I may owe your dad a new set of dishware." She sounded anything but apologetic. "But I held them off until I ran out of things to throw."

Stiles winced, imagining the wreckage.

"Eventually Etch-a-Sketch over there" she indicated the tattooed man with a flick of her chin, "tackled me, but not until after I stuck him like the swine that he is. And the witch bitch shot me with some kind of dart." Lydia gave a delicate little shudder at the memory, massaging her wrists where creases from the ropes still marred her skin.

"Tranquilizer," Stiles agreed. "That's what knocked me out, too. Are you ok, though? You're covered in blood."

Lydia took a moment to assess. "I've got a few scrapes and bruises, but most of this is his," she said sending the man a withering look. "How did you get free?"

Stiles pulled the fairy queen's talisman out from under his shirt. "This," he explained. "There's some sort of spell over this area – something that puts people to sleep. I think the Order was depending on that to keep us quiet, because the tranquilizer wore off while they were still driving us here. The talisman must have protected me from the magic, so I woke up as soon as the tranquilizer was out of my system."

"So why am I awake?" Lydia asked, her analytical mind quickly picking up on the most glaring unknown in the equation.

"I, uh, borrowed one of the talismans the Order was using for protection."

"Hmm." Lydia's hand went to her neck and traced the soft cords of the necklace. She brought the metal ring up to eye level and examined it for a moment before letting it fall back to rest against her chest. "And what happened to them?" She asked primly, eying the two dark mounds visible through the van's open door.

Stiles grinned. "I kicked their asses."

Lydia raised both perfectly manicured brows. "I'm impressed." She tilted her head to the side. "Is that their blood?"

Stiles followed her gaze down to his side. "Oh, uh, no." He plucked forlornly at the torn and blood-soaked fabric, and winced when the congealed mess tugged at the edges of the knife wound. "Not exactly."

Lydia sighed and leaned in to take a closer look. "It's long, but not too deep," she informed him. "You'll live, but I recommend avoiding the pointy ends of their weapons next time."

"Duly noted," Stiles said dryly.

"They must have bandages in here somewhere," she pushed herself up and started rustling around in the front seats. "What do you know about their plan?"

"I…" Stiles swallowed, throat suddenly tight with nerves. "I still don't have the whole picture, but I overheard them talking. They were planning on using us as sacrifices. They said the rest of the captures had gone well. It's a guess, but I think they have the pack, and I think we have until midnight to get them back."

"Tell me every detail you remember," Lydia demanded, and, taking a deep breath, Stiles did.

The van's dome light shone over a pile of junk spread across the middle bench seat. Stiles glared at a hat he'd pulled out of a non-descript backpack with dawning incredulity.

"Do you see this?" he demanded in outrage, shaking the Mickey ears at Lydia.

She raised an unimpressed eyebrow but otherwise made no move to respond.

Stiles glowered at the closest unconscious Order member. They'd propped both lifeless bodies in the van's back seat, deciding it would be better to keep an eye on them than leave them behind, even if they did appear completely dead to the world.

"There's a souvenir cup from Niagara Falls, a can opener in the shape of the Statue of Liberty, a singing keychain from Mount Rushmore, a goddamn toilet seat cover with Elvis' face on it, and, oh my god, are these _fireworks_?" Stiles demanded, leaning in close to examine the neon packaging. "These are _illegal_ in California. Haven't these people ever heard of forest fire prevention?"

Lydia rolled her eyes. "I really think forest fires are the least of their concerns."

Stiles shook his head in disgust. "I was looking for some devious plan - some intricate, calculated path of destruction creeping towards us, but _no_. These fuckers were just disorganized _tourists_. They must have killed the Golem while visiting Mount Rushmore, and that family of yetis was found near the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. _Jesus Christ_ , I cannot believe how many hours of sleep I lost trying to figure that out. This is my angry face. My angry, sleep-deprived, you-have-my-pack-and-I-will-kill-you face. You jerkwads. And talk about hypocritical. How the hell can they claim to be all about the balance of nature and shit when they're buying this trashy tourist crap that clearly feeds into the capitalist strip mining of earth's resources to create flimsy memorabilia that will only add to our dumps?"

"Stiles," Lydia broke in. "Breathe before your pass out from oxygen deprivation."

Stiles sighed. Then he looked down at the Mickey ears still clenched in his fist. "Oh my god, he even got it embroidered with his name." Stiles pointed indignantly at the stitched cursive letters spelling out "Boris" on the back of the hat. "What kind of self-respecting villain pays extra for embroidery?"

"Focus please," Lydia singsonged, breaking into his frustrated muttering. "As fascinating as this is, we've got less than three hours until midnight. Let's analyze their motivations _after_ we save the pack."

Stiles gave the fireworks one last angry glare before he shoved them aside with a sigh. "You're right," he conceded, shuffling through a useless pile of brochures about helicopter tours of the Grand Canyon and the top ten hiking trails in Yosemite.

"I think I found something," Lydia said.

"What?" Stiles scooted over to look at the pile of stuff she'd pulled out of the van's glove compartment.

"It's a map of Beacon Hills." She pointed at the unfolded paper. "This big circle. That's the Nemeton, isn't it?"

Stiles nodded, recognizing the location. "And these little dots out here…"

"They form a circle around it." Lydia traced the shape with her finger.

"A circle," Stiles agreed, touching each of the five points, "Or a pentagon, or maybe even a pentagram depending on how they connect. Do you think they're the axial points?"

"They must be, which means we're at one of them. So which one is us?" Lydia wondered aloud.

"No way to tell." Stiles said, then flailed as he realized how wrong he was. "No wait, I've got this!" He snagged the woman's key ring from the pile of stuff he'd pilfered out of their pockets and scrambled into the van's front seat, ignoring the throbbing protest from the quickly bandaged knife wound on his side. As the engine started up, the dashboard panels blinked to life, and the central display screen brought up an absurdly cheerful welcome menu. "There was a map," Stiles recalled, glancing through the menu buttons. "Here!"

He let out a sigh of relief as the GPS kicked in. He'd been worried, with the inexplicable lack of cell reception, that the GPS might not work either. Fortunately, a red pin flashed into place over a solid green background labeled 'Beacon Hills Basin Wildlife Preserve.'

"Zoom out," Lydia suggested.

A few taps on the screen revealed labeled roads and recognizable landmarks to the east.

"Greenvale Park," Stiles said, pointing.

"And Beacon Lake." Lydia agreed. Cross referencing, she placed a finger on the point to the south-west of the Nemeton. "We're here."

"Which means the others must be…" Stiles looked at the paper map, then back to the display. "Here," he tapped the screen and dropped a pin. "And…here. And here. And here?"

"Yes." Lydia nodded once, decisive. She shuffled through the other glove box papers and froze, her fingers hovering over a sheet that looked like a photocopy of a page from an old book. It was full of incomprehensible tightly packed lines.

"Lydia?" Stiles prompted after several seconds of silence.

"It's the spell." Lydia flipped the page over, and there were scribbled annotations in both English and Russian covering the other side. "I think it's the spell for shutting down the Nemeton and eliminating the supernatural, but…" Her eyebrows drew together as she flipped the paper back over, then flipped it again.

"What?" Stiles demanded, eyes catching broken phrases like 'blood sacrifices' and 'willing vessel' and 'guide the flow of power' every time Lydia turned to the handwritten notations.

"They're not the same. The original and these notes – they're different. Contradictory, even."

"What do you mean?"

Lydia flipped the paper over again. "The whole thing is wrong. It's just…It's like a parody, like someone was trying to simulate an ancient ritual, but didn't have accurate information. This," she said, indicating the photocopied side full of vertical lines slashed with short slanted stripes, "Is a rare variant of Ogham, an ancient Celtic dialect. It's instructions for a spell, a ritual, but even that's wrong. The druids didn't write down any of their own knowledge. They didn't even describe themselves. Modern scholars believe they were literate, but recording their knowledge was forbidden by some part of their doctrine. Everything we know about them comes from artifacts or accounts written by outside observers, so there shouldn't _be_ any genuine Druid spells recorded in any dialect."

Stiles blinked. "So it's fake?" he asked, confused. "It won't work?"

"Oh, no." Lydia brought her chin up and met Stiles' eyes. "It'll work. It's just not druid magic. It's blood magic dressed up to look like a druid spell."

"But why bother?" Stiles asked. "If they had a spell that would work, why bother to translate it into ancient Celtic?"

"No clue," Lydia shrugged one shoulder. "And there are discrepancies between the Celtic spell and the notes here. But I need time to look at it, and we've got a hell of a lot of rescues to pull off before midnight."

Stiles sat up a little straighter. "So, what's the plan, Stan?"

"Find the bad guys. Knock them out. Rescue our friends."

Stiles grinned. "Simple. Elegant. I like it. Axial points first, you think?"

Lydia nodded. "You drive, I'll read. Do _not_ crash into any trees."

"That was one time!" Stiles protested as Lydia closed the van's side door and swung into the front seat. "And it totally wasn't my fault. We were being chased by trolls!"

Lydia tossed her curls over one shoulder and gave him an arch look. "One tree, three werewolves, a kanima, a chimera, and two gashadokuro. Not exactly a stellar driving record. What are your insurance premiums these days?" she asked, making a big show out of buckling her seatbelt.

"Low blow," Stiles grumbled. "Stop using facts against me. That's so unfair." He threw the van into drive, and headed east towards the next axial point.

Stiles' head snapped back as Kira's fist connected with his jaw. He only just jerked out of range in time to dodge her other hand, a crackle of lightning dancing over her palm.

"Holy god!" Stiles cursed, dropping the bloodied talisman around Kira's neck and scrambling backwards, ignoring the burning knife wound in his side in favor of getting as far away from the flaming kitsune as possible. "It's me, it's me! Don't attack!"

Kira struggled upright. "Stiles?" she asked as the flames surrounding her sputtered and died out.

Stiles snorted, splattering blood on the forest floor as he massaged his aching jaw. "Yes, damn it. Can everyone please stop hitting me in the face while I'm trying to save your lives?"

Next to them, Lydia was crouched beside a disoriented Chris Argent, who had also come to swinging and was responsible for Stiles' bloody nose. Chris's presence had shaken him even more than the punch. The fact that Allison's dad had been pulled into this mess meant it was entirely possible that his own father was out there somewhere, unconscious and probably bleeding, and Stiles could not even begin think about that right now.

"Maybe you need to learn to keep your face out of range," Lydia suggested. "We obviously all went down fighting. It only makes sense we'd wake up in a bit of a mood."

"You know what? I'm putting you in charge of resuscitating the next pack members we find. Let's see how well you do when Isaac wakes up all claws and fangs and snarling werewolf rage," Stiles grumbled, unrepentantly wiping the blood from his nose off on the trailing black sleeve of one of the unconscious Order members' robes.

"Where are we?" Kira asked, at the same time as Chris demanded "What happened?"

They quickly explained the salient points they'd pieced together from their own spotty memories and the Order's cryptic notes.

"We drove here in their van," Stiles said, "Parked about a quarter mile away and approached on foot."

"We knew we just needed to get the talismans off them, so it was easy enough in theory," Lydia added. "And it got even easier when one of the guards wandered away to take a leak in the underbrush."

"I slipped up behind him as he was taking care of business, sliced the talisman's necklace strap, and he dropped mid-pee," Stiles recounted.

"Classy," Kira observed.

Stiles shrugged. "It worked. Anyways, the second guy was even easier. Pee-man—"

"Stiles," Lydia broke in, "We agreed you wouldn't call him that."

"No, you agreed because you actually _are_ classy. I, on the other hand, think it is a perfectly sound nickname considering it's his only defining action. As I was saying, Pee-man had a tranq gun on him, so Lydia used that to take down our pal Sleepy, here," he nudged the unconscious man lying bound at his feet with one toe. "Shot him in the left butt cheek, and bada bing, bada boom, you guys were free. You're welcome."

"Your story telling technique is really…unique, Stiles," Kira said with a tentative smile.

"Thanks," Stiles grinned. "What do you guys remember?"

"We were getting ready for movie night. Allison and Isaac had already left for Stiles' house," Kira said, "And Scott and I were going to ride his motor bike over, but one of the tires was flat. Mr. Argent came out to help replace it when…"

"Around fifteen people appeared out of nowhere," Chris continued, taking up the story. "Black robed and tattooed, just like those two." He indicated the guards Stiles and Lydia had taken out.

"There were fifteen of them?" Lydia asked, eyebrows climbing.

Kira nodded. "Yeah, and they obviously knew who they were after. A bunch of them had guns and they opened fire on Scott first."

Stiles felt the blood drain from his face. "They shot Scott?" he asked, voice suddenly unsteady.

"They were shooting darts, not bullets," Chris replied, gruff but somehow still comforting.

"Tranquilizers," Lydia guessed, hefting her own confiscated gun.

"I think so," Kira agreed. "They obviously knew Scott would be the hardest to take down, because every person holding a gun shot him with that first round. He was still moving, even with all the darts in him. Chris managed to get off a few shots, and I zapped a couple," She gave a tired smile, "But they reloaded quickly, and took us out with the next round."

"And you have no idea what happened to Isaac and Allison?" Lydia prompted.

A vein in Chris' forehead throbbed at the mention of his daughter. "They left a few minutes before we were attacked. My guess is they met with another welcome party on the road."

Stiles swallowed. "What about Melissa?"

Kira's eyes went wide, as though she'd only just realized Scott's mom was probably in danger, too. "Working a late shift. She was supposed to get off at nine."

"Five axial points and the Nemeton," Lydia said in a flat voice. "So far, there have been two of us at each point, which probably means they need twelve people total, and since you're here…" she looked straight at Chris.

"That means the Sheriff and Melissa are probably also in trouble," Chris concluded.

"Nine pack members and the three pack parents in the know. Everyone we had participating in our little sleepovers. They must have been watching us." Stiles took a steadying breath, pushing down the ever-present fear for his father's safety. "It doesn't change anything. We already knew they'd taken our pack. We just have to figure out how to get everyone back."

Kira tilted her head quizzically. "If they had fifteen people to take us down, why are there so few guarding us here?"

"The rest of them must be at the Nemeton," Lydia answered. When all eyes turned to her, she continued. "That's the nexus. The central point. That's where they'll have Scott and Derek."

"The alphas," Chris was nodding. "Their tie to the land is stronger than the betas and other pack members."

"So let's go there," Kira said. "Let's go and cut this off at its source."

Stiles felt his gut clench at the idea of leaving Scott and Derek in the clutches of these madmen for even a moment longer than necessary, but he met Kira's fierce gaze and forced himself to shake his head. "We can't."

"Why not?" she demanded.

"Because we can't take on a whole damn army of these people when there are only four of us." Stiles scrubbed his hands through his hair, thinking out loud. "We have no real idea what kind of numbers we're dealing with here. You said fifteen attacked you, and that probably means they had just as many to take down Derek, Jackson and Danny – maybe more, because there were two werewolves. They must have had another group to take on Isaac and Allison, and a few more for both my dad and Melissa. They only had two for the two of us, but I heard them say we were "unguarded," like the only way we would have been a threat was if someone else was watching over us."

Lydia rolled her eyes, and Kira let out a disbelieving huff of air.

"Clearly they underestimated your ability to make trouble," Chris said in a dry tone.

"Clearly," Stiles agreed. "But other than the fact that they are laboring under the delusion that Lydia and I are helpless, we still don't really know anything about them. There could be fifty of these people. A hundred. More. We have no idea what kind of weapons they have, what kind of magic. We also have no clue yet how to safely stop this spell. We need all the help we can get."

"I can call for backup," Chris said. "One of these bastards must have a phone."

"Maybe," Stiles conceded, "But I doubt it will work. I heard one of the goons holding us say they were 'going dark,' and neither of the phones I've checked had reception. I'm guessing there's some sort of magical interference." There was a stubborn set to Chris's jaw, but Stiles continued, wielding common sense like a weapon. "And what good could they do anyways? The only reason we're conscious at all is because of these talismans." He held up the spare Order talisman, and tapped his own fairy gifted one for good measure. "We have no idea how far the stasis spell reaches. Even if you were able to get a hold of your men, as soon as they reached the spell line, they'd just pass out."

Chris ground his teeth. "We should split up then. We can hit the axial points faster and free the others before we tackle the group at the Nemeton."

This time it was Lydia who shook her head. "Bad idea. Both axial points so far have been guarded by two Order members. If we split up, we're fighting two on two. I'd much rather outnumber them. And we don't know for sure that the other axial points will have two guards. What if there are ten at the next point? What if we somehow give ourselves away and they hit us with more tranq darts before we can fight back? And without phones, we don't have a way to stay in contact with each other, either."

"We're a pack," Stiles agreed. "We're stronger in numbers. That's what the fairy queen said, that we had to stand strong and fight together. She was right about the Order coming. I'm guessing she's right about this, too. Listen," he took a shaky breath and met first Kira's eyes, then Chris's, "I want to save the others as much as you do. My best friend is out there, my dad, too, probably, and Derek," his voice broke over the name, but he swallowed and forced himself to continue. "And the rest of the pack. But we've got to be smart about this. We've got to work together, or we could all be killed."

Kira was nodding, and Chris gave him a long, assessing look, before he finally said, "Alright, kid. What's the call?"

Stiles felt a little of the tension in his shoulders drain away. They were probably still completely fucked, but it was nice to know that he wasn't going to have to fight his allies on this, not when he was already fighting his own instincts, instincts that were urging him to abandon logic and head straight to the Nemeton. He was almost glad there was evil to fight so he didn't have to examine that desire too closely.

He pulled the map of Beacon Hills out of his jacket pocket to distract himself, and spread it out. "Lydia and I started here." He pointed to the first dot they'd identified. "And we're here now. As long as communications stay down, the Order probably isn't going to realize we've taken out two of their bases. If we continue around the circle and tackle each of these as we go," he pointed to the three remaining dots, "Then maybe we'll have the numbers we need to take down the group at the Nemeton."

Chris gave a decisive nod, and Lydia stood up a little straighter.

Kira closed her eyes for a moment, and Stiles could read her inner turmoil, knew she was fighting the same desire he was to race straight to the Nemeton, straight to Scott, and probably straight to certain doom. Finally, she opened her eyes and met Stiles' steady gaze.

"Alright," she said. "Let's do this."

It was at times like this, huddled in the back seat of a moving vehicle, reading cryptic notations in crappy handwriting by the unsteady illumination of an iPhone flashlight, that Stiles really appreciated how brilliant and multi-talented his packmates were.

Chris, muttering about reckless teenage drivers, had booted Kira, Stiles, and Lydia to the back of the van and firmly taken hold of the steering wheel.

As they drove towards the next axial point, Lydia started the painstaking process of translated the incomprehensible Celtic characters into English, and Stiles and Kira combed through the papers and paraphernalia they'd sifted out of the Order member's belongings, looking for any clues about what they might be facing.

Kira had a fairly solid grounding in general occult knowledge even before she'd discovered that she was a mythical being herself. That knowledge had increased exponentially with access to her mother's secret library of archaic texts and scrolls. Combine that with Stiles' ability to spot patterns in almost any kind of chaos, and they made one hell of a detective duo. By the time they neared their destination, they'd pieced together a sketchy picture of the different layers of spells at work.

"So there's a stasis spell," Kira pointed to the page detailing how the spell should be set up. "It's what's knocking everyone out. It relies on an artifact for power once it's activated, so it should be pretty straightforward to undo. I think we just have to find a wooden statue of a sleeping bear and break it."

"Sounds easy enough," Chris allowed, carefully steering around a low-hanging branch. He was driving slowly with the headlights off even though they were still more than a half mile away from the pinned point on the map. They definitely didn't want to risk alerting the Order to their presence.

"The Nemeton draining spell is going to be a bit tougher." Stiles held up another stack of pages they'd found, containing references to the ritual, a few rough diagrams, and a list of necessary items. "It's darker magic and requires precisely placed blood sacrifices to fuel it."

"Us?" Lydia asked glancing away from the text she was still translating.

"Us," Stiles agreed. "These points," he indicated the five dots on the map, "are spaced in a perfect pentagon around the Nemeton, and they're supposed to guide the flow of power to and from the tree. Each one of them falls on a ley line."

"The telluric currents?" Lydia asked.

"Yeah," Stiles confirmed. "The spell needs power from the land and the sacrifices. It also needs another person, not exactly a sacrifice, but someone they're referring to as the 'vessel.' It sounds like the vessel has to absorb the Nemeton's power as it's drained, otherwise it'll spill out into the world as wild magic."

Chris drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. "That doesn't sound good."

"No," Stiles acknowledged, "It doesn't. There aren't any specifics here, but I get the feeling that without the axial point sacrifices and the vessel, the power would just explode outwards, like a magical bomb."

"Great," Chris' knuckles went white as he clenched his fingers around the steering wheel.

"The last spell is a little less clear," Kira continued. "It's the reversal spell. In theory, it takes the power drained from the Nemeton, power that previously drew supernatural creatures to it, and pushes it back out towards them as a weapon."

"Like flipping a switch that turns a regular light bulb into a bug zapper," Stiles explained. "The poor moths'll never know what hit 'em."

"That analogy is a little creepy when you realize we're the moths," Lydia sighed. "Do the notes explain how the switch will be flipped?"

"Not exactly," Stiles answered as Chris pulled the van to a silent stop within walking distance of the next axial point. "But it seems to have something to do with the power of the ley lines, a web of amulets, and the will of the vessel from the second spell. It claims it will 'restore the balance of nature,' whatever the hell that means. There aren't many details, just vague hints, but if they've already started setting up the amulets, that might explain why the phones aren't working. One of the notes mentioned the amulets cause interference."

"We'll have time to figure that out on the next drive," Chris said, grabbing the tranq gun he'd taken off one his captors and checking to make sure it was loaded. "For now, we've got work to do."

"God damn it," Stiles swore as Danny clocked him upside the head with a wayward elbow.

"Stiles?" Danny asked, blinking groggily and sitting up.

"Yes," Stiles heaved a long-suffering sigh, and shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears. "It's me, though I'm not going to remember that much longer if you guys don't stop hitting me in the head."

"What?" Danny squinted, clearly confused, and Stiles couldn't exactly blame him. Lydia, on the other hand, gave a derisive snort.

"Are you _laughing_ at me?" Stiles demanded, indignant. "Repetitive brain injury is no joking matter, Lydia. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Look it up."

"I took three graduate level courses in Cognitive Neuroscience last summer, Stiles. I know what CTE is. What?" She demanded when everyone stopped what they were doing to turn and stared at her. "I was bored. Anyways, I thought you said it was going to be my job to wake up this group."

Stiles shrugged, probing his jaw gingerly with one hand. "I figured it wouldn't hurt if I had another go. You made it look so easy with Jackson."

Stiles had actually been a bit anxious about that. It was bad enough being whacked by a human, but add supernatural strength to one of those sucker punches and it could do some serious damage. Undeterred, Lydia had simply knelt next to her boyfriend, slipped the talisman over Jackson's neck, and brushed it against his bloody but already healed lower lip. Jackson had woken with a shuddering gasp, eyes open and flashing blue, then immediately turned and buried his face in Lydia's curls, wrapping her in a crushing hug.

"Clearly you have an unfair advantage, here." Stiles decided. "You're like a werewolf whisperer or something."

Lydia arched an eyebrow. "Or maybe you just suck."

"You know what I've always loved about you, Martin?" Stiles asked.

"My honesty?" Lydia answered with a wicked grin.

Stiles snorted. "I was going to say your subtlety and grace."

"Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" Danny asked plaintively.

"We'll fill you in on the way," Chris replied, closing the back door of the van on the six neatly trussed and unconscious Order members. "Get in."

"This guy's an idiot," Danny said, thumbing through one of the Order member's phones he'd managed to hack. He was squished on the middle bench seat between Stiles and Kira as the van bounced slowly towards their next destination. "He didn't even bother to clear his message history. There's a complete record of every text he ever sent or received."

Jackson craned his neck around from the front seat just so he could roll his eyes at his best friend. "It's almost like he wasn't expecting us to wake up, escape, steal his phone, and have a hacker capable of bypassing the lock screen."

Danny snorted. "Whatever. That's no excuse for sloppy security practices."

"I'm not saying you're wrong, sweetie," Lydia consoled from her place on Jackson's lap, still mostly focused on her translation, "But since it's working out in our favor this time, let's have a little less outrage and a little more detective work, please."

"Fine," Danny grumbled, and continued to read.

"This is ridiculous," Lydia complained a minute later, capping her pen and twisting around in Jackson's lap to hand the newly completed translation of the Celtic text back to Stiles. "They've outlined step by step instructions for the Nemeton shut-down and reversal spells, including all their potential weaknesses."

"Really?" Kira's brows formed a delicate V. "That seems like one of those things you shouldn't write down, like your ATM password."

Jackson rolled his eyes again. "It's almost like they didn't expect us to wake up, escape, steal their paperwork, and have a genius capable of deciphering ancient Celtic."

Lydia preened. "Still," she said, "I wouldn't have taken the chance. You'd think they'd have some kind of evil-doers' handbook out there with instructions like 'Never write down the vulnerabilities in your satanic rituals.'"

"They do," Danny replied. "It's called 'The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord.'"

"My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through," Stiles quoted.

Kira grinned. "My favorite was: 'One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.'"

Danny smirked and shook his head. "No, no. The best was definitely: 'I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.'"

"Oh my god," Jackson griped. "You are all such massive nerds."

"Dude," Stiles scoffed. "It's a classic. And you could have done with a refresher on number thirty-four."

Danny chuckled and Kira let out a startled laugh.

"What the hell is number thirty-four?" Jackson demanded.

Lydia smiled sweetly. "I will not turn into a snake. It never helps."

Jackson flipped them all off without even turning around.

"My favorite is number fifty-six," Chris said from the driver's seat, surprising everyone. "My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at ten meters will be used for target practice."

There was a long moment of silence before Kira finally said, "I guess that explains why Allison's so good with a bow."

"Yes. Well, clearly these evil overlords have not been reading their handbook," Lydia concluded. "Leaving this information lying around is just careless."

"Yeah. Except…" Stiles blinked as he finished skimming through Lydia's translation, his mind suddenly ricocheting back and forth between a hundred seemingly unconnected ideas. He knew that feeling well enough not to fight it, knew what his brain was capable of when it skittered off chasing a half-formed thoughts, and suddenly the clues and hints were sliding together, dimly remembered bits of research and overheard phrases slotting into place like Tetris pieces on an arcade screen. His mind rapidly sorted through each, aligning them and letting them fall, and within seconds, he was just one perfect piece shy of a top score. "Exactly how rare is this dialect?"

"Extremely," Lydia answered, offhand. "I only know it because I needed to translate that ancient inscription about the púca when we thought there were shape shifters living near the lake. As far as most of the world knows, the only original examples of Ogham are a few dozen rock carvings strewn about Ireland. Fortunately, Deaton has a few long-lived elven friends who were able to find me a _very_ old comprehensive dictionary. It would have been a waste to send it back without learning it all."

"So the likelihood that anyone who's not you would be able to decipher this is…?" Stiles prompted.

Lydia twirled a curl around one finger and shrugged. " _Highly_ unlikely."

"And it's not exactly something you'd be able to put into Google translate." Stiles looked down at the incomprehensible symbols and Lydia's neat notes. "Is it possible that whoever's in charge has been using it as their own type of secret code? Writing notes to themselves in a language that makes it appear all ancient and official? I mean, it really looks legit."

Lydia shrugged one shoulder. "It _looks_ legit, but it's an obvious forgery. I told you, Druids didn't write down their spells."

"Yeah, but if we didn't know that, this would look totally real. It could easily lend someone some serious credibility, right? I mean, they have a spell written in ancient Celtic, and they're probably the only one who can read and decipher it, like in the Middle Ages when only priests were allowed to read and interpret the bible. You can control a lot about how people think when you do all the interpretation for them."

"Maybe," Lydia conceded, "But they'd be banking on their followers not questioning or researching on their own."

"Sure," Stiles nodded, handing the translation to Kira, "But we're talking about a cult mindset, here. These people are ready to commit murder in the name of human sacrifice. I think it's safe to assume there's something a little off about their psychological states."

Kira was scanning the translation with mounting astonishment. "You were right when you said there were discrepancies between this and the English notes."

"And the ones in Urdu, French, and Russian, too," Lydia confirmed.

Kira blinked. "The basic process is the same, but the end result is completely different."

Stiles nodded. "It looks like someone's been feeding their minions a big ol' pack of lies."

Danny frowned. "I don't remember that being forbidden on the Evil Overlord list, but I feel like it should be number 101."

It got easier as they went, gaining more weapons, more pack members, and more insight from their growing pile of cracked cell phones and purloined paperwork.

Chris calmed substantially after they stormed the fourth axial point and freed Allison and Isaac, and Stiles felt one of the tightest knots in is gut loosen when he hugged his dad after they'd rescued him and Melissa at the fifth.

Based on the cell phone data, Danny estimated there were probably around forty Order members not already unconscious and tied up in the backs of the two vans they'd appropriated.

Lydia, Kira, and Stiles poured over the details and weaknesses of the spells while Chris and the Sheriff went over tactics with Allison, Isaac, and Jackson. Melissa, muttering obscenities under her breath the whole time, patched up everyone's wounds.

"So that's it, then" Stiles said, looking down at the rough sketch of their plan of attack. "Everyone knows what to do?" He waited until they'd all nodded in assent. "All we need now is some luck and one hell of a distraction."

Lydia smirked. "I think I can manage that."

They had a plan. A good plan. A plan that might actually work; that could, hypothetically, end with everyone in the pack walking away with all limbs still attached.

Stiles clung to that knowledge and to the bark of the tree he was hiding behind with his fingernails. It was the only thing stopping him from sprinting into the middle of the Order-filled meadow and straight towards the slumped forms of Derek and Scott.

The small meadow was teaming with people. Black-robed figures stood guard as gray-clad men and women carved patterns in the trunks of a few of the surrounding trees. A small group swathed in white stood in a tight knot on the other side of the Nemeton, too far away for Stiles to make out more than the muted murmur of their discussion. A few more in brown hung delicate ornaments from the limbs of surrounding trees.

Alone atop the severed stump of the Nemeton, cross-legged, eyes closed, and head tilted up towards the nearly-full moon, sat a single flame-haired figure in robes of deep forest green.

Aside from the cut of their clothing, there was outwardly very little to tie the group together. The black-robed guards were tattooed, but the others weren't. Their skin tones varied from rich onyx to pale sandstone. Some were tall, some short, some slender, some stout. Still, there was a kind of grace about them, one and all, a fluidity and economy in their movement that spoke of predators at bay.

Stiles didn't care.

The sight of Derek—bound, sagging limply against the Nemeton's stump, ashen skin streaked with darkly gleaming patches of fresh blood—had hit Stiles like a physical blow.

He looked _dead_.

Stiles ground his teeth as he stared at Derek's profile, at the blood-matted hair falling in a disheveled sweep over his forehead, at the cheek that was darkened more by dirt and gore than by stubble. He wanted to kill whoever had done this.

Seriously.

He was going to _stab someone_ for what they'd done to his…to his friend.

Stiles swallowed. He wasn't even sure he was allowed to feel this way, gutted and bruised and angry on Derek's behalf. He'd never told Derek how he felt, after all. If anything, he'd actively worked to hide it, to keep from disturbing the precarious balancing act his life had somehow become. Hell, he'd barely admitted it to himself, but the hurt and rage were slamming through him, knocking rational thoughts aside like twin bowling balls scattering pins, and Stiles wasn't sure it was something he could hide any more.

And how wrong was it that Stiles couldn't pull his eyes away from Derek when Scott, his best friend, was there too, beaten and bloody and unmoving. He closed his eyes and dug his fingernails deeper into the tree.

He jumped as Isaac rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "They're alive," he whispered.

"You're sure?" Stiles asked, pushing the words out past the vice-like knot in his throat.

Isaac nodded. "I know their heartbeats."

Stiles blinked at that. "You can hear them?"

"Yes," Isaac confirmed.

"But…" Stiles shook his head, trying to refocus. "The spell. They should be in stasis, shouldn't they? Like the others? No breathing, no heartbeats…"

"They're not. Their hearts are beating. They're breathing too. Actually, I think Derek's growling."

Stiles looked back at Derek, and they were just close enough that Stiles caught a flicker of movement as one of Derek's hands curled, his fingers clenching like he was trying to form claws.

Stiles felt a burning flash of relief— _thank holy god, they were still alive_ — before a man in a crisp white robe strode into his line of sight.

Stiles hated him, hated everything about him from the bleach-bright color of his clothes and hair to the way he stepped delicately around the bloodied alphas at his feet, careful not to sully his shoes.

With the air of a meticulous scientist scrutinizing a particularly interesting experiment, the man leaned down and examined Derek, then gave a little shake of his head as he straightened up and regarded the green-robed woman.

"This does not bode well, _Ban-Tuathach_ ," the man intoned, his voice carrying far enough on the crisp night air that Stiles could make out the words clearly.

After a long moment of silence, she stirred, tipping her head down and opening her eyes to regard the man with a cool gaze.

"What is your concern?" she asked, and it was the same voice Stiles had heard on the phone in the van, resonant with calm authority.

The man inclined his head in deference, and Stiles was going to go out on a fairly sturdy limb and assume that this was Moiran, the woman Danny had pinpointed as the leader of the Order.

"The alphas are resisting the stasis spell," the man replied. "We've stripped them of their packs; stripped them of their power. They should not have the strength needed to fight the spell."

Uncoiling like a snake, Moiran stood, stepped gracefully off the Nemeton's stump, and sauntered towards Scott. As she approached him, his fist clenched and his jaw worked, though his eyes were still closed.

"What if the pack is not contained?" the old man asked, his tone worried. "What if something went wrong? If the axial points have fallen…"

"All axial points checked in before we went dark," Moiran replied evenly, her calm demeanor eerily reminiscent of Deaton. "Have faith in your fellows, Thomas. We are on the verge of success."

"But, _Ban-Tuathach_ ," the man persisted, "If the axial points have been compromised and the Nemeton's power is drawn or released without guidance, the results could be catastrophic."

"These are alphas," Moiran broke in, stepping past Scott and pausing by Derek. "Both of them. We have never attempted the stasis spell with two alphas in the same territory. You warned me yourself, before we began. It _should_ work in theory, but clearly in practice there are a few unforeseen issues." She patted the old man's shoulder and smiled. "Even if they do wake, the wolfsbane ropes will hold them. It is less than an hour until midnight, old friend. We are close..."

With one delicate hand, she reached out and grasped Derek's chin, tilting his head up so the moonlight illuminated the rough planes of his cheeks and the smattering of blood congealed at one temple.

Though his eyes were still closed and his body was still mostly limp, Derek unconsciously flinched away from the contact.

Moiran regarded him with an unreadable expression, then shook her head sadly. "We are so close to restoring Nature's Balance." Almost carelessly, she flung her hand aside, sending Derek's head slamming back into the trunk of the tree.

Stiles bit down hard on his tongue to stop an instinctive cry of protest, bile rising at the back of his throat.

He'd been wrong. So wrong. Moiran's demeanor was nothing like the vet's. Deaton's calm was quiet and comforting, a show of self-control as well as a plea for peace. This woman might appear serene, but the wild glint in her eyes showed it was only a thin veneer. Deaton wore Zen like a warm sweater. Moiran wore it like a straight jacket.

Stiles shuddered.

"Clearly these animals don't know when they're beaten," Moiran sighed, accepting Thomas' offered handkerchief and delicately wiping Derek's blood from her fingers. "Tranquilize them again."

On Moiran's command, one of black-clad guards raised her gun, but before she could fire, a piercing scream split the air.

Robes rippled in as the Order members twirled as one to face the blood-curdling sound.

Moiran locked eyes with one of the perimeter guards. "Go," she bit out, and without another word, a group of fifteen black-robed men and women slunk into the forest, weapons raised.

As long as everything went to plan, they wouldn't be coming back. Chris and Allison were perched in the trees a short distance away, waiting to pick the guards off one by one with their stolen tranquilizer guns. Danny and Lydia, light on their feet and equipped with a knowledge of the preserve gleaned from years of running with the pack, were on the ground to retrieve the Order Members protective talismans as soon as they were downed and lead any strays into the trap.

Stiles scanned the meadow and ran a quick head-count. Danny had been right in his estimated numbers. There were twenty five robed figures still moving around the clearing, some staring in the direction of the scream, others hesitantly resuming their tasks. Moiran and Thomas stood shoulder to shoulder next to the Nemeton, peering into the shadowed woods.

Stiles waited a full count of sixty to be sure the deployed guards were well on their way, then met Isaac's eyes and nodded. The werewolf tilted his head back, neck straining, and Stiles knew he was whining high in his throat, a cue Jackson would hear and pass on, but at a pitch no human would pick up.

In the meadow, Derek and Scott fidgeted, still unconscious, but clearly fighting it.

Stiles felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as static crackled through the air, and with a sudden blinding brilliance, a lance of lightning struck one of the tattooed guards.

There was a moment of startled stillness, then the guard toppled face-first to the ground.

The meadow erupted like a kicked ant hill, robed figures scattering in all directions. Isaac launched himself forward, bowling over one a tattooed woman and throwing a man sideways into a tree. On the other side of the clearing, Jackson leapt into the fray, teeth bared and eyes flashing blue.

The guard who had been about to tranq Derek took aim at Isaac instead, but before she could pull the trigger, there was a tiny flicker of movement, and a dart bloomed out of her left shoulder. She jerked, looked at the tranquilizer with a bemused expression, and collapsed backwards in an ungainly heap.

Stiles wasn't sure if it was Melissa or his dad who'd fired the dart, but a second shot coming from the opposite end of the clearing downed a guard who was aiming at Jackson. At the same time, another luminous flash of kitsune-guided lightning felled a brown-robed figure and tinged the air with a lingering scent of burnt ozone.

Stiles threw himself into the writhing masses, darting around fights and skirting robed figures as he dashed towards the center of the clearing.

The pack was holding its own for now, but these were trained fighters who had already taken the pack out once. They'd been lax about security—probably a symptom of overconfidence in the stasis spell—but they obviously knew werewolf weaknesses and how to exploit them. Stiles was sure that when they got over the initial surprise of the attack, the pack would be fighting to survive.

They'd known going in that a frontal assault was unlikely to succeed, but the attack was only a distraction, drawing attention away from the real objective – drawing attention away from _Stiles_.

Stiles, who might not be stealthy, but who had an incredible ability to flail himself through danger and come on the other side mostly unscathed.

Stiles, who had the spare Order talisman and could wake up one alpha, then help drag the other to safety, depriving the Order's trap of the bait it needed to spring.

Stiles, who even now was sprinting headlong towards the Nemeton.

It wasn't a perfect plan, but it was the best they had.

Except, as Stiles drew closer, ducking a wayward fist, he caught sight of Moiran hauling herself back onto the Nemeton's stump. She stood glaring at the roiling confusion before her, and Stiles' stomach dropped to his knees when he saw her face. Her calm manner had vanished completely. In its place, stark madness gleamed in the whites of her eyes.

Without warning, she strode to the edge of the stump, unsheathed a wicked looking knife, and knelt next to Derek. It was like watching the counter on a time bomb jump from ten minutes to two seconds, and adrenaline punched through Stiles' already taxed system.

She was going to perform the rite. She was going to sacrifice Derek, let his blood flow over the roots of the Nemeton, and in doing so set off the first step in the spell.

But Stiles knew the dominos were no longer poised to fall. The Order's careful preparations were unfinished, and all that power, without the sacrifices to direct it, would go horribly awry.

"Stop!" he yelled, still running towards Derek, towards Moiran and the Nemeton, headless of the violence churning all around him. "No!" His voice cracked on the single syllable, but somehow he managed to push out another. "Don't!"

For all the crackles of lightning, for all the growls and crunching impacts, the meadow was oddly devoid of voices. Perhaps that explained why Stiles' shout carried so well over the noise, why the fighting suddenly stilled as every eye swiveled as one to regard him.

This was not part of the plan. Stiles was supposed to keep his head down, dart and dodge and depend on the distraction his pack was providing to get through to the two alphas.

Instead, Stiles skidded to a halt, alone in a small empty space, eyes locked on the raised blade in Moiran's hand.

"Stop," he repeated, no longer screaming, but easily audible in the sudden stillness of the meadow. He met Moiran's eyes, and refused to flinch at the loathing he saw there. "If you kill him now, you'll kill us all."

Thomas stepped forward, his white robe marred with patches of dirt and blood. "He speaks true, _Ban-Tuathach_ ," he hissed, his urgent whisper just loud enough for Stiles to hear. "The preparations are not complete, and the axial points have clearly fallen. Unleashing the Nemeton's power now would end in disaster. We must regroup."

"No," Moiran grabbed Derek's hair and pulled his head back to expose his throat. "We can't stop now. I've waited too long."

Stiles could taste her intention on the wind, crackling around her like a madness-fueled field of static electricity, and he screamed, all the air punching out of his lungs at once, because she was going to do it anyways. She was so god-damned drunk on power that she was going to kill Derek and Scott and release the Nemeton's force with no guiding channels for it to flow through. She was going to kill Stiles' best friend and his…and Derek, and in doing so, kill them all.

Thomas was frozen beside her, face a rictus of fear, and why wasn't he stopping her? He had to know it was sheer insanity, know the unleashed power would wipe them all off the map, but he just stared, eyes locked on her upraised knife, and did absolutely nothing.

Stiles had no idea when he'd started to move again, but he felt the sharp slap of his feet on hard-packed dirt, felt his muscles coil as he dodged between people, pelting forward like a rock from a slingshot as Moiran struck, knife slashing down towards Derek's exposed throat.

Stiles dove, slamming into Derek head-on, knocking the unresisting alpha sideways out of the knife's path and blanketing Derek's prone form with his own body.

He knew to expect it, the agony of honed metal slicing through his flesh, but it still stole his breath when Moiran's blade slammed into his back and skidded sideways across the hard plane of his shoulder blade.

He kicked out and felt his foot connect with Moiran's ankle, saw her stumble back a step as she lost her balance.

Locking his arms around Derek's chest, he rolled them away from the Nemeton, fighting to pull them out of range.

The pain as his injured shoulder connected with the ground was blinding and white. He cursed, sparks shivering at the edges of his vision as his momentum pulled Derek's unconscious weight across his chest. He knew he only had a handful of heartbeats before Moiran would recover, before she'd close the distance and attack them again, so he gritted his teeth against the pain and wrenched sideways, rolling them both until he straddled Derek's hips.

There was movement behind him, scuffling and growling, a gunshot, the crackle of static in the air. He ignored it all, his whole focus on freeing Derek.

The key ring felt slick in his sweaty hands, but he clenched his fingers tight around a single key and heard the satisfying snick of the blade retracting. The razor edge of the dragon bone sliced through the ropes with one clean swipe, and Stiles reached forward with shaking hands to drag the spare talisman over Derek's head.

As soon as the metal touched his bloody skin, Derek's eyes flew open, crimson and wild, and Stiles flinched because he hadn't thought this through. He hadn't thought this through _at all_ and Derek was going to wake fighting, all claws and fangs and undiluted rage, and if Stiles was too slow to dodge a punch from Lydia, he sure as hell wasn't fast enough to get away from an infuriated alpha werewolf.

Derek would rip through the closest threat, through _him_ , and Stiles had the briefest moment to regret that his dad was about to watch him die, that Derek would have to live with the knowledge that he'd killed Stiles.

Then the body under him twisted, an arm like an iron band wrapped around his stomach, hauling him back, shoving him safely behind a wall of solid muscle and snarling werewolf rage.

Stiles sagged forward resting his weight against Derek's heaving back. He was aware on some level that it might be ill advised to use an irate alpha werewolf as a crutch, but Derek was alive, and he hadn't accidentally mauled Stiles, and maybe it was relief or the blood loss talking, but suddenly, being plastered to Derek's back felt like the safest place Stiles had ever been.

"No!"

It was Melissa's voice, her agonized scream breaking over the single syllable, and Stiles forced himself to raise his head and peer around Derek's heaving shoulder.

And, shit. How could Stiles have forgotten _Scott_? Forgotten that there were _two_ alphas that could be used to trigger the Nemeton's spell?

Moiran stooped beside Scott's unconscious body where it slumped against the Nemeton, one hand holding her knife to Scott's throat, while her other hand…

Her other hand was _in his chest_. Literally inside his torso, like she'd just rucked up his shirt and passed her fingers straight through his skin, sank her hand wrist-deep through solid muscle and bone as easily as if they were water.

There was no blood, no broken skin or torn flesh, but Stiles knew this spell, had seen it in Deaton's books, and he understood the damage she could inflict intentionally or accidentally if her hand solidified, still locked around Scott's heart.

Stiles caught sight of a flash of dull metal behind them and knew without looking that Melissa was taking aim.

"Don't shoot!" he shouted, frantic because if she fired, if Moiran lost consciousness while her hand was still in Scott's chest… "Don't shoot!" he bellowed again. "It'll kill him!"

Even as he yelled, he felt Derek tensing as he took in his surroundings, the muscles under his palms bunching for a lunge.

"Wait," he hissed, low and desperate, reaching out and grimacing when his shoulder screamed at the movement. Somehow he still managed to grab Derek's arm with one hand as he blinked back tears of pain.

The restraint was nothing against an alpha's strength, but Derek stilled, hesitating because Stiles had asked him to, trusting Stiles to make the right call.

If Stiles hadn't already been in love with the man, that probably would have pushed him right over the edge.

The flutter of warmth he felt was quickly doused by roiling waves of nausea and fear as his eyes locked again on the knife at Scott's throat and the vicious snarl on Moiran's lips.

He had to stop this madwoman, and in order to do that, he needed to _focus_.

If she was using the phasing spell from Deaton's grimoire, it was powerful, but limited. It only worked on living flesh, and was impossible to use on inanimate objects, which meant as long as her hand was phased through Scott, she couldn't kill him without seriously injuring herself.

It was a stalemate, and the manic glint in Moiran's eyes told Stiles that she knew it, too.

"What are you doing?" Moiran screeched, gaze darting over the robed figures frozen mid-fight, apparently spellbound by their leader's suddenly erratic behavior. "Kill them!"

There was a soft rustling of fabric as a few of the Order shifted nervously from foot to foot, but none moved forward. Stiles read hesitation in their eyes and pushed his advantage.

"What's the point?" he called out, infusing his voice with as much scorn as he could muster. Carefully cradling his left arm against his chest, he pushed himself upright and stepped around Derek, ignoring the way the alpha's growl ratcheted up several decibels. "The whole pack is here," Stiles continued as Derek crowded in behind him, breath hot against his nape. "Your plan won't work. Without sacrifices at the axial points, you've got no way to contain the Nemeton's power."

"They're filthy abominations!" Moiran spat, ignoring Stiles in favor of glaring at her motionless minions. "Disgusting perversions of nature! They must be put down like the rabid animals they are!"

"Right," Stiles lobbed the word at her like a grenade, "Because you're so very full of humanity's best virtues. Setting up stasis spells, then strolling in to commit wholesale murder while your victims are unconscious. You're the very definition of kindness and compassion."

Something darted along the tree line, there and gone again in a flash. Stiles caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and resisted the urge to turn towards it, not wanting to draw any attention. He didn't need to anyways, not with Derek's base rumble of "Allison" breathed low against his ear. If Allison was back, Chris, Danny, and Lydia must not be far behind.

Stiles took a step towards Moiran, trying to draw her eye, and felt Derek follow.

It worked. Moiran turned her glare on Stiles, eyes alight with undisguised hatred. Stiles didn't flinch, meeting her scowl with one of his own, because as long as her attention was focused on him, Scott would likely stay alive. And if he kept her distracted, the others might have enough time to figure out how to cut through this Gordian knot.

"How many helpless creatures have you and your merry band slaughtered?" Stiles demanded. "We know about the gnomes in Zion. The Pied Piper in Vegas. The harpies in Yellowstone. How many more were there? And what had they done to you? What had they done to deserve death?" His muscles were trembling, whether from blood loss, fear, or anger, he didn't know, but suddenly Derek's hovering presence behind him became a solid, warm support, and he leaned into it before his knees could buckle and reveal exactly how unsteady he was.

"Their very existence is a threat to Nature," Thomas intoned, and Moiran's gaze shifted to the old man, standing little more than a stride from her.

Derek leaned in closer to whisper, "Lydia has a plan. Keep them talking."

Stiles gave a small nod of acknowledgement even as he glared down the old man. "What gives you the right to decide that?"

"It's a simple truth," Thomas shook his head, eyes narrowed over Stiles' shoulder at Derek. "Their unnatural abilities bring disorder to the world. Their strength, their speed, their ability to shift forms…"

"Ok, yeah. Their tendency to go all freaky fur-day is a little odd, and they've got some incredible gifts. I'll give you that. But all species have different abilities, different strengths and skills. I mean, have you ever seen an octopus? They have nine brains, three hearts, and blue blood, and they can change shape and color at will. Why are they ok but werewolves have to be eradicated?"

"Werewolves are dangerous," Moiran spat.

Stiles snorted, "So are lions and bears, but I don't see you hunting them down."

Thomas' brows furrowed at that, but Moiran only sneered.

"Maybe you killed some dangerous beasts," Stiles allowed, "But I studied your movements. I looked at the places and creatures you attacked, and most of them were harmless, living peacefully until you showed up and slaughtered them in their sleep. How is that fair? How is that right? How are you any better than the 'monsters' you set out to defeat?"

"We fight for balance," Thomas argued.

"No," Stiles shook his head, "You fight for _power_. Or at least, she does." He gestured at Moiran, and bit back a groan as the movement sent sickening waves of anguish through his back.

Suddenly, warm fingers slipped under Stiles' shirt and pressed against the clammy skin of his back. The tell-tale fuzzy numbness of a werewolf pain-drain washed through him, and the relief was so intense he felt a little lightheaded.

He cleared his throat, trying to gather his thoughts, and forced himself to refocus on the old man. "Do you know what this spell will do for her?"

Thomas glared. "She is the vessel. She sacrifices her own purity and sanctity to guide the war against the supernatural plague."

"Wrong again," Stiles smiled, but it wasn't a friendly expression. He met Moiran's mad eyes and refused to look away. "She's the vessel, so she'll absorb the Nemeton's power and that means she can do whatever she wants with it. She's not sacrificing anything. She's using you. She's using us to make herself more powerful."

"Lies!" Moiran shrieked.

"You're a bigot, pure and simple," Stiles said. "You're setting yourself up like some sort of prophet, but in reality, you're just a biased, prejudice asshole who's trying to instigate a mass genocide so you can gain power."

"The supernatural must be expunged," Thomas said, though he sounded a little less certain now than a righteous zealot should. "We fight for balance. We fight to restore nature to her pure, unsullied state."

Stiles shook his head. "You don't get it. The spell she showed you is bullshit. Look at her! Look at what she's already doing! Does that look _natural_ to you? No matter what she's told you, she's not planning to get rid of the supernatural. She's going to _become_ supernatural. Powerfully so. She'll be as close to immortal is it's possible to–"

"Silence!" Moiran screeched, and Scott twitched as she jerked, the knife at his throat cutting a shallow line into his skin.

Without warning, Derek moved, shoving Stiles down as something bright sailed past them, straight towards Moiran's face.

Stiles grunted as Derek's weight fell on top of him with a growled " _Stay down._ " The words were completely unnecessary considering the two-hundred plus pounds of alpha werewolf currently pinning him to the forest floor. Still, Stiles strained to keep his eyes focused, following the flight of the sparkling little thing.

Moiran turned towards the innocuous projectile, face a snarl of haughty incredulity as she moved to bat it out of the air.

It exploded.

The meadow flashed white, then fizzed with a shower of blinding sparks.

Stiles squinted in pained surprise, and barely made out the silhouette of Moiran jerking both hands up in an instinctive reflex to protect her eyes.

She must have realized her mistake as soon as she'd made it, her expression shifting from surprise to fear, but it was already too late.

The moment her fingers cleared Scott's skin, a knife hilt sprouted from Moiran's throat, blooming a crimson spray of hot blood. Half a heartbeat later, and a shot sounded, and Thomas groped blindly for the dart in his neck. Both of them dropped to the forest floor.

"Shit," Stiles gasped, blinking to clear his vision.

There were sounds around him – feet running over crunching leaves, familiar voices all talking in a rush – but Stiles couldn't make sense of any of it. He ducked his head, nausea and pain rolling over him in waves. The heat at his back was suddenly gone, but a warm, steady arm wrapped carefully around his waist, pulling him off the ground. Stiles clutched at it, at the solid body it was connected to, and let out a shuddering breath. "Derek."

"Yes," Derek acknowledged, voice close and surprisingly gentle as he helped Stiles sit upright. "You're ok. It's ok. Just breathe."

Stiles did, taking a shaky inhale, and carefully avoiding looking towards the Nemeton, towards the crumpled form on the ground beside it. "I'm fine, help the others. The fight—"

"It's over," Derek replied, scrunching a fist full of Stiles' shirt up to press against the still bleeding wound on Stiles' shoulder. Stiles hissed at the pressure and Derek wrapped his other hand, warm and solid, around Stiles' exposed waist. Once again, the roiling pain in Stiles' shoulder lessened, and he watched curling streaks darken Derek's arm as he siphoned off enough to make breathing bearable.

"Over?" Stiles asked. "But the other Order members—"

"Unconscious," Isaac answered as he wandered up beside them. He held out a fistful of talismans. "We took them out while you were having your little chat. Everyone was watching you guys, so we just…" He extended a clawed finger like a hook, "Snipped these off, and took care of the stragglers with tranqs."

Stiles let out a laugh that sounded a little hysterical even to his own ears. "Good plan. You guys used one of the fireworks?" At Isaac's nod, Stiles continued, fighting to stay focused on the conversation as Derek's hand skimmed along his skin, cataloging every bump and bruise. "I guess all that tourist crap was useful after all. How's Scott?" he asked, voice only slightly breathier than usual.

"Kira and Melissa are helping him," Isaac answered as Derek let out a low, unhappy growl, thumbing at the edge of the bloodied bandage over Stiles' ribs. "They put a talisman on him and he's conscious."

"Thank god," Stiles sighed, valiantly ignoring the soft press of Derek's fingers against his skin as he nudged Stiles around and carefully shifted the wadded shirt to get a proper look at the gouge across his shoulder blade. "What about everyone else?"

"Danny sprained his ankle, Jackson's healing a broken wrist, and Chris is looking a little twitchier than usual," Isaac reported with a smirk. "All in all, no worse than our usual Friday nights."

"Melissa needs to look at this," Derek said, breaking in to the conversation.

"I'm fine," Stiles said, knowing full well he wouldn't be without the magical miracle of Werewolf mojo. "Help me bandage it for now. The rest can wait until we get back to Deaton's."

"You need surgery," Derek grumbled, pressing the fabric of Stiles' t-shirt hard against the wound again, his mouth a grim line.

Stiles hissed at the renewed pressure despite the pain Derek was siphoning off. Derek was probably right, but he let out an unsteady breath and shook his head. "I'm fine," he repeated, resting his hand against Derek's tense bicep. "It'll be ok. Let her take care of Scott."

Before Derek could respond, the crunching of heavy boots on dry leaves announced another arrival.

"Stiles?"

"I'm fine," Stiles replied as he turned towards his father's anxious voice. A relieved smile tugged at his lips when he saw that his dad appeared relatively unscathed. He had a small cut across one cheek, and one of his sleeves was torn, but otherwise he seemed ok. "That was some fancy shootin', Sheriff."

"Could have been better," his dad said, eyeing Stiles' shoulder meaningfully. "How bad is it?"

"Not bad," Stiles said at the same time as Derek growled, "He needs a doctor."

Concern clouded his dad's already worried expression and Stiles glared over his shoulder at Derek. He turned back to his dad, countless placating words already half-formed on his tongue, but before any of them made it past his lips, a loud crack echoed through the clearing.

Stiles tensed. He knew that sound, recognized the glimmer of sparkling light hovering just at the edges of his vision, and only barely stopped himself from burying his face in his hands.

"Oh god, here we go again," he sighed, then turned to face the familiar flitting figure of the fairy queen flanked by fifty or so of her guard.

"Greetings, pack leader," she intoned in her melodic voice.

Stiles groaned. "I'm not…" he started to protest, then squawked indignantly as Derek dragged him backwards, and suddenly there was a growling wall of werewolves between him and all the sparkles.

Stiles wasn't entirely sure where Jackson had appeared from, but he, Derek, and Isaac stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of Stiles and his dad, creating a rather impressive barrier of furry sideburns and fangs. Even Scott had pulled himself away from his mother's tender mercies, and surged forward to stand behind Stiles, eyes glowing red.

"It's fine, guys," Stiles soothed, trying to sound more calming than desperate. The last thing they needed right now was to start some sort of interspecies war with the fae. "She's the one that gave us the warning about the Order." The growling didn't stop, but at least the volume dropped a bit.

Stiles closed his eyes and took a deep breath. At one point in his life, he was sure the idea of being surrounded by four angry, snarling werewolves would have worried him considerably. He wasn't quite sure what to do about the fact that at this point, he found it kind of cute. He let out his breath on a sigh, and opened his eyes.

"Hey there, Your Majesty." He peered over Derek's shoulder and gave a little wave with his good arm. "It's so lovely to see you again."

Either sarcasm wasn't a thing in fairyland, or the queen was remarkably good at ignoring it. She smiled regally, and gave a gracious nod.

"We are glad to find you and your pack well." Her eyes narrowed in on Stiles, darting from the bloody bandage at his side to the awkward way he held his injured arm. "Mostly well," she amended.

"Oh my god," Scott whispered very audibly, "Is that the fairy queen?" He craned around Stiles to get a better look. At least he'd stopped growling, unlike another idiot alpha of Stiles' acquaintance who would remain nameless.

"Be cool, dude," Stiles hissed between clenched teeth as he gave Derek a judicious prod in the ribs. He was rewarded a second later when the growling stuttered and died.

"I'm glad we're all in one piece, too," Stiles smiled, this time addressing the miniscule monarch. "Thanks for the warning, by the way. And the talisman." He brushed the ivory charm with his fingers. "It was a literal lifesaver."

"We are glad our small tokens have been of use," she replied, "Though through your efforts tonight, the debt we owe to the Hale pack has only increased. This new pack has proven just as tenacious, just as righteous as those who came before, and your sacrifices have not gone unnoticed."

"Uh, thanks?" Stiles hedged, "But I really don't think you owe us anything. Seriously. Without this talisman, we'd all have been goners, so I'm pretty sure your debts all paid."

"Your gracious words have been noted," the queen replied. "Nevertheless, we wish to offer further assistance. First, let us ease the wounds you have sustained while fighting in our defense."

The pack _hadn't_ been fighting in the fairies' defense. They'd been fighting for survival, for each other, and possibly to end some terrible, supernatural version of the apocalypse. And ok, maybe somewhere in there the fairies had also been saved a little bit, but that was more coincidence than anything.

Before Stiles could express any of that, though, the queen's jewel-bright eyes flashed golden, and he gasped as brilliant, honey-sweet warmth seeped through his shoulder and side, pushing back the pain. He heard Danny's quite curse and Jackson's bitten off yelp, and beside him, Scott muttered, "What the hell?"

"What did you just…" Stiles started, and then cut off as Derek spun towards him, gaze sharp and probing.

"Stiles?" he demanded, eyes raking over him.

Stiles blinked. "It doesn't hurt to breathe." He moved his arm experimentally, and noticed Jackson doing the same. It really didn't hurt. What the hell?

Stiles craned his neck and looked down at the ragged hole in his shirt where Moiran's knife had stabbed into his shoulder blade. There was blood. There was _a lot_ of blood, all wet streaks and dry, crusted patches, making his shirt stiff and his skin itch. But under the blood, the skin itself looked smooth and unbroken.

Stiles' eyebrows raised in incredulity.

And suddenly, Derek was in his space, all solid muscle and warm breath, and Stiles froze.

It wasn't new, exactly. Derek was almost always in Stiles' space these days in one capacity or another, pressed against him on the couch on movie nights or slamming him into walls when they trained. Ever since they'd started training together, it was a rare day that Stiles didn't come into some kind of physical contact with the alpha. And he'd been living in Stiles' house for the past two weeks, adding a torturous combination of unavoidable brushes as they passed each other on the stairs and accidental kicks under the dinner table. Hell, they'd been plastered together not five minutes before, Derek a steady warm wall behind him while the world around them exploded…

But there was something different in the way Derek was moving now, something purposeful and proprietary, like he had a right to be this close, like he was staking a claim.

Stiles' mind was so busy trying to process the intent in Derek's proximity that he nearly missed it when Derek hiked up his shirt and peeled the bandage off his ribs with careful fingers. Then they both stared at the thin, white scar that traced the line where the gash used to be. Derek ran one thumb over it, and there was still no pain, just a shocky firing of nerve-endings that sparked under Stiles skin and put even the blinding flash of fireworks to shame.

Stiles swallowed convulsively and pushed Derek's hands away, awkwardly pulling his shirt back into place. He took an unsteady step back, forcefully shoving any Derek-related thoughts firmly to one side because they were still standing in a clearing surrounded by dead and unconscious bodies, their bloodied, exhausted pack, a fluttering envoy of fairies, and his _father_ for fuck's sake. Stiles really could not cope with his tangle of Derek-related emotions on top of this level of death, destruction, and supernatural mayhem.

Derek moved as if to follow, then stopped and made the visible, conscious choice to stay put, to allow Stiles his space.

Taking a steadying breath, Stiles turned back to the fairy queen. "Thank you," he said, sincerely grateful to avoid another set of doctor's visits and a long, painful recovery.

"Of course," the fairy queen said simply. "It is but a small gesture of our gratitude. And there is another service we would offer you, if you wish it."

Chris stepped forward, arms crossed and a suspicious look on his face. "What's that?"

The queen glanced towards Chris, and then refocused her attention on Stiles. "If you want to deal with the Lost on your own, that would be understandable. Your pack has every right to mete out justice as you see fit. However, considering the number of offenders and the possible complexities of human law enforcement's involvement in such a case, we wish to offer you an alternative."

"An alternative?" Stiles' dad asked, sounding unimpressed.

The queen tipped her head in assent. "The Council of Nine deals with those who stray into the darkness. With your consent, we will bring the Lost to them."

"What?" Stiles gaped at her, suddenly full of righteous indignation. " _What_? There's a _council_ to take care of this shit? Where the hell were they two hours ago when we were all being bludgeoned and kidnapped?" he ranted, willfully ignoring the frantic calming gestures Scott was making at him. "Where were they two months ago when the Order massacred those gnomes? Hell, where are they _now_?"

"You misunderstand," the fairy queen soothed. "They, like the fae, no longer interfere in the conflicts of this realm. But they do meet out punishment to those deserving, once their actions are complete."

Lydia arched an eyebrow. "So you're telling me we can wash our hands of these creeps? That there's some sort of supernatural justice system that can punish them and make sure they don't harm anyone else?"

The fairy queen turned her huge, jewel-bright eyes on Lydia and regarded her with interest. "Yes, Death-crier," she declared.

If Lydia was bothered by the title, it didn't show on her face.

"I still don't get why these people didn't step in at some point," Stiles insisted. "And for that matter, why didn't you? Don't get me wrong, the talisman and the hints were great and all, but you guys literally just healed all of us without breaking a sweat. Why not use your powers to stop the Order _before_ they nearly wiped everyone out?"

"Once, we might have intervened," the queen said, a sad smile playing across her face, "But in those ages, this land was ravaged by war and our interference often did more harm than good. The Fae have since sworn an oath, as have the Council of Nine, to observe this realm and not to interfere unduly. You will have to take our word that it is for the best." She flitted up a few inches, stopping at eye-level with Stiles. "We help in what small ways we can without disrupting the course of events. Passing judgment on those in need is one of those ways."

"What will happen to them?" Kira asked, gesturing at the unconscious men and women sprawled around the clearing.

"The Council is both wise and fair" the queen answered. "They weigh the actions of each individual brought before them, and respond accordingly. Those who deserve punishment will receive it. Those who deserve help will find comfort and support. In both cases, the world will be safe from the Lost."

"I've heard of the Council of Nine," Chris said. "Whispers, mostly, but the stories align."

"I don't know," Stiles' dad said, brows drawn. "These Order folks are probably wanted for crimes all over the country. They can be brought to justice here, as well."

"But how are we supposed to prove what they've done?" Allison asked. "I'm guessing the shattered remains of a Golem aren't exactly admissible in court."

"Yeah," Scott agreed. "And what if they get talkative while they're being interrogated?

Kira frowned. "One criminal claiming they were fighting werewolves might be dismissed as crazy, but multiply that story by fifty and it's a little more incriminating."

The sheriff paused, thinking that over, and Stiles shrugged. "It'll save you a lot of paperwork."

"That's not a good reason to avoid prosecution, Stiles," his dad replied.

"It's not exactly like Beacon Hills has enough holding cells to contain them all," Derek interjected, and there was an awkward pause while everyone remembered how much time Derek had spent in those holding cells himself.

The sheriff sighed and leveled a serious gaze at his son. "Do we trust them?"

Stiles shrugged again. "They did save our lives. Without their warning and talisman, I wouldn't have woken up in the first place."

"True," his dad conceded. "That doesn't mean we trust them."

"Paperwork," Stiles reminded him.

"So very much paperwork," his dad agreed, scrubbing a hand over his tired face. He exhaled slowly, then met Stiles eyes and said, "Alright."

Stiles looked around the rest of the group and was met with a series of shrugs and slow nods.

He turned back to the fairies. "Apparently we have no better ideas, and the local law enforcement seems ok with it, so yeah, thanks. We'd really appreciate the assistance."

The fairy queen inclined her head, and without another word, the fluttering entourage behind her scattered, each ball of incandescence flitting toward a different prone form on the ground. Two groups flew into the woods, headed in opposite directions. Stiles assumed they were taking care of the scouts and the Order members still trussed up in the vans.

He watched as the nearest fairy land delicately on one of the black-robed women's foreheads. She bent and placed her tiny palm flat against the woman's skin, and with a sharp crack, they both disappeared. There was another crack, then another and another, as the slumped figures around the meadow vanished in rapid flashes of light. Stiles heard a more distant series of snaps as well, then gradually, the rapid-fire noise began to peter out.

"It sounds like popcorn," Scott said, expression caught somewhere between disturbed and hungry.

Kira rolled her eyes. "If we ever run into a problem that doesn't make you think of food, I'll know it's actually the apocalypse."

The meadow was empty now, but for the pack and the fairy queen, and she turned towards Stiles with a quick flick of her wings. "It is done," She stated. "The Lost will no longer trouble you or this land."

Stiles felt the solid knot of tension riding high between his shoulders loosen just a little bit at her words. "Good."

"Before we leave you, there is perhaps one last way we may be of assistance." She locked eyes with Stiles. "You have been working towards finding a way to safely disperse the Nemeton's power and break its hold over those creatures within its thrall."

"Yeah," Stiles agreed, slightly unnerved by the intensity of her gaze.

She glanced around the clearing, eyes skimming across the curved lines freshly carved in the trunks of the trees and the intricate ornaments hung on their branches. "Though the leader of the Lost intended to use this spell to usurp the Nemeton's power, the spell itself is not dark. It is the will of the vessel alone that determines its outcome. You could use this spell to quiet the Nemeton's rage."

"By killing my pack?" Stiles raised a doubtful eyebrow. "That sounds like a terrible idea."

"No one need die, pack leader. Do you remember what we discussed when last we met? A life's worth of blood forcibly taken…"

"Has less power than drop of blood freely given," Stiles finished, heart kicking up as he suddenly grasped her implication. "Wait…that means we can—" he cut off, mind racing through the possibilities.

The fairy queen closed her eyes, and seemed to focus for a moment. Stiles felt something pass through him, invisible but there, echoing in his chest like the reverberation of a base drum. When she opened her eyes again, she was smiling. "All the foundations for the spell are laid. You need but activate it at midnight when the moon rides highest in the sky. If you guide the Nemeton's power back to nature, your pack and our supernatural brethren will be released from this burden."

Stiles stared at her, mouth agape.

"Time grows short," the queen intoned. "We wish you and your pack luck in this, as in all else. Perhaps we shall meet again, pack leader." She bowed her tiny head, and with another sharp crack, she was gone.

Stiles spun to Lydia. "Was she right?" he asked. "Could the spell still work?"

Lydia pulled the folded spell translation out of her pocket and scanned it quickly before nodding. "It should. The spell says the amulets needed to be doused in the sacrificial blood at midnight on the night before the full moon to open the lines of power. If it really only takes a drop, in theory we'd just need to get back to the axial points and smear a drop of blood each on a talisman at the right moment to activate it."

"How much time do we have?" Jackson asked.

Danny fished through one of the backpacks of supplies they'd gathered for the attack on the Order, pulled out a phone, and checked the time. "Forty-two minutes."

Chris glowered. "That's not much time to decide what to do. Are we sure this spell will work? How far do we want to trust a random fairy?"

"A random fairy queen," Scott corrected.

"Gut instinct?" Stiles said. "I think we can trust her. I did some research on the fae after they snatched me and they seem to live by some pretty strict rules. I think she's probably telling the truth. And this is the closest we've ever come to finding a fix for the Nemeton."

"Hang on a second," Stiles' dad broke in, rubbing the bridge of his nose like he was trying to ward off a headache. "We've just barely managed to survive a massive group kidnapping by an insane cult who wanted to sacrifice us to a tree. Are we seriously discussing diving into another potential magical crisis?"

Stiles shrugged. "Yes? I mean, this is the closest we've ever been to diffusing the Nemeton's power. If we can stop it, we'll probably be dealing with a hell of a lot less chaos around here, and I don't know about you guys, but I'm all for a little more peace and quiet."

Derek turned to Lydia. "Does the spell mention potential dangers? Anything that might happen if we screw it up?"

Lydia nodded. "The worst case scenario is what nearly happened. If a sacrifice is made here at the Nemeton without the axial sacrifices in place, the power would be too much for any vessel to hold, and it would break free and sweep across the land in a wild torrent of destruction."

Kira rolled her eyes. "Well, that doesn't sound dire or anything."

"It definitely wouldn't be good," Lydia conceded, "But it also says the spell could be performed with as few as two axial points active if the vessel was strong enough. And we're not talking strength in magic, here. This is based on strength of will, and the vessel's ability to focus on a goal and fight for it."

"Then how do we make sure everyone's in place?" Danny asked, checking the phone again. "There's still no signal, so we can't call each other."

"Why don't we use these?" Kira pulled the remaining neon firework packages out of Danny's backpack. "We can send up a flare when we get into position. All the axial points should be visible from the Nemeton, right?"

"That might work," Chris said, peering off into the woods to calculate the distance.

Allison leaned forward, looking over Lydia's shoulder. "Will anything terrible happen if a sacrifice is made at the axial point but not at the Nemeton?"

"Not according to these notes. It's only dangerous if the Nemeton goes off without the axial points. The only other danger it lists is the vessel itself. Whoever is trusted with that power has the potential to do some serious damage if they choose to."

"So if we manage to get everyone in place on time and the vessel is trustworthy and stays focused, it should work?" Melissa asked.

Lydia nodded. "And apparently all that the vessel needs to do to is channel the magic back into nature. If they don't want to control the power themselves, they just have to act as a conduit and allow the power to flow back to its natural place."

"Then it sounds like it's worth a try, at least," Isaac offered.

Scott nodded, and Derek gave an affirmative grunt.

"Ok, then," Stiles said "We don't have much time. Let's get back to the axial points. Same groups as before?"

"No," Derek and Scott said at once. At some point, Derek must have stepped closer to Stiles, because he was looming alarmingly close.

Beside him, Scott's fingers were fisted in the fabric of Kira's hoodie. Clearly he wasn't going to let her out of his sight.

"You have to stay here, Stiles," Lydia said, as though it was obvious. "You're the vessel."

Stiles blinked. "What?"

"It makes sense," Scott said. "You've been trying to find a way to diffuse the Nemeton for months. None of us have been as nearly as focused on it as you."

"And you're a spark," Chris added, "You've had experience using your will to direct magic before."

Everyone was nodding, which made _no sense at all_ because, yeah, Stiles might be able to use mountain ash in a pinch, but he wasn't exactly the poster-boy for attention spans, even on his best days, and this definitely wasn't one of his best days. Before he could voice any of that though, his dad spoke up.

"Also, you're apparently the pack leader," The smirk on the sheriff's face let Stiles know he was never going to live that one down.

"Listen," he protested anyways, unwilling to give up without a fight. "The fae are obviously crazy. I'm not–"

"I don't know," Jackson shrugged, cutting him off. "It kind of suits you."

Stiles squinted at the beta, unsure if Jackson was being serious or just being an ass.

"Yeah," Isaac agreed. "We always use your house for movie night."

"And you occasionally provide us with healthy snacks," Allison added.

Stiles crossed his arms and glared. "Those are not actually leadership qualities. God, if this is how our world leaders are being chosen these days, no wonder the global political stage is such a shit-show. Do we really have time for this right now? Can we maybe postpone the whole make-fun-of-Stiles show until _after_ we shut down the Nemeton?"

"Sure thing, boss," Kira quipped, all sass in a way that made Stiles remember her shy and awkward early days with aggressive fondness.

"This is ridiculous," he declared. "You are all ridiculous."

"The longer you spend fighting this, the less time we have to make it work," Lydia reprimanded, somehow managing to look down her nose at him despite his height advantage.

Stiles closed his eyes to avoid looking at any of their stupidly hopeful faces. "What does the vessel actually have to do?" he asked, ignoring his better judgment.

Lydia shrugged. "Sit on the Nemeton at midnight, open yourself to the power when it comes to you, and avoid thinking any terrible thoughts that might make it into a weapon. As long as you just let it flow through you, and don't try to impose your will on it or corrupt it with evil intent, it should find its own way back to nature, like water running downhill."

Stiles looked at her incredulously. "Just think happy thoughts? Really? This isn't Peter Pan, despite that visit from a real-life Tinker Bell. It's gotta be harder than that."

"The spell is pretty clear," Lydia shrugged. "The will of the vessel can harness the power, or let it flow safely back into the world."

"And that will stop the Nemeton's pull?" Stiles asked, his objections crumbling.

"It won't be the Nemeton anymore," Lydia confirmed. "It'll just be another stump in the woods."

Stiles heaved a sigh. "I don't know if I can do this," he admitted.

"You'll do fine," Derek said, and the world really must be ending if Derek was acting as the voice of assurance now, but then everyone else was nodding, too, and voicing their assent.

Stiles swallowed and gave a slow, unsteady nod. "Ok," he agreed finally. "I'll try. But if this goes tragically wrong, I'm blaming all of you."

"You've got this." Scott smiled with the kind of blind optimism that was probably going to get them all killed some day. "We trust you."

Stiles really hoped he was worthy of that trust.

He hoped it while the rest of the pack got into pairs, and divvied up the talismans and fireworks.

He hoped it as Danny gave each group a cell phone with an alarm set to go off five minutes before midnight so they'd be sure to be ready on time.

He hoped it as the groups piled into separate vans and chatting quietly and slamming doors like this was any normal night.

And he hoped it even harder when they drove off, leaving him alone in the clearing with Derek.

Stiles sat on the edge of the Nemeton's stump, heels drumming a nervous tattoo against its bark as he tried to find the focused calm he'd need to channel its power.

Everyone seemed so sure he was the right guy for this job, but Stiles was far too aware of his own distractible mind to share their certainty.

It was terrifyingly possible that he was going to fuck this up.

Derek, who was restlessly prowling the edge of the clearing like an extraordinarily grumpy guard dog, was definitely doing nothing to help his concentration. Stiles should probably have been grateful for the distance since his ability to focus on anything other than his own conflicted feelings decreased exponentially the closer Derek came, but the continual motion at the edge of his vision was setting his nerves even more on edge.

Stiles sighed and checked the time again, but only a minute had passed since he'd last stared at the cell phone's display. He rolled his shoulders to fight the building tension in his back.

A bright flash suddenly illuminated the sky to the north, red and blue sparkles fanning out, then drifting lazily towards the tree tops.

"That's the last of them," Stiles said. "Everyone's in place."

"Good," Derek grunted, finally coming to a stop.

"We've got fifteen minutes till midnight."

Derek nodded and started moving again, which would have been bad enough on its own, but it was made even worse because he was moving _towards_ Stiles now, his expression unreadable.

"Hey, are you ok?" Stiles asked as Derek stalked closer, shoulders bunched like he was expecting a fight. And he was in Stiles' space again, unnervingly close, jaw clenched as his fingers skated along the bloody slashes in Stiles shirt. "It's over," Stiles reminded him, because it looked like Derek might have forgotten that somehow. "We won. The fight's done."

"Yeah," Derek closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like he was coming to some sort of decision. "Yeah," he said again. "I'm done fighting this."

And then he was kissing Stiles. Actually _kissing_ him, all soft lips and rough stubble and just the barest hint of blunt teeth, and Stiles froze, his nerve endings suddenly on fire with the press of Derek's mouth over his, the tortuous slide of hot fingers around the back of his neck and a part of Stiles sighed _finally_ , the thought seductive and simple and so easy to slide into. But this wasn't right. It wasn't real. It wasn't—

Stiles bit back a frustrated groan, shoving Derek away even though it felt like he was trying to peel off part of his own skin.

Derek blinked at him, eyes unguarded and almost sweetly confused, and it was nearly enough to make Stiles reach out and pull him back in, to make him ignore the fact that Stiles wasn't what Derek needed. But he couldn't do that. He couldn't—

"No." His voice caught as he tried to push the words out. "This won't work." Intellectually, he knew it must be true, even though all of his emotions wanted to deny it. He forced his mouth to form the words. "We're not compatible"

Derek made a startled noise, something halfway between a huff and a snort. "What?"

"We're not compatible," Stiles repeated, an ache building up at the back of his throat that he desperately tried to swallow down.

Derek glared at him. "Yes we are."

Stiles' stomach twisted at that. He wanted to believe it, wanted to trust the frustrated sincerity he thought he saw in Derek's eyes. He took a deep breath, jaw clenched as his mind waged an internal war.

He'd been quietly pining after Derek for months. Was he really going to push him away? His lips were still tingling, cheeks still burning from Derek's stubble, and he could still feel the ghost of warmth where Derek's hand had cupped his skull moments before. Did he seriously want to talk Derek out of kissing him again?

Of course he didn't want to. But he was _going_ to. There was no future in a relationship with Derek. Nothing they could build on. No security. Derek needed someone who could stabilize him and his pack - an emotional anchor. His alpha biology would know who that was, and Stiles wasn't it.

Stiles shook his head. "We're not." He looked down, unable to meet Derek's eyes as he continued, voice a little unsteady. "I know about fixation, ok? I talked to Deaton."

"You talked to Deaton about this?" Derek demanded, sounding as close to scandalized as Stiles had ever heard him.

"Yeah, of course I talked to Deaton about this. I wasn't about to believe Scott without verifying his information."

"You talked to _Scott_?" And what do you know, apparently Derek was capable of sounding even _more_ scandalized.

"Yeah. I mean, you were acting all weird," Stiles said, trying not to sound accusatory, "And Scott was worried. He told me all about your crazy alpha instincts. And...and Deaton said you're not fixated on me, so..."

Stiles jerked, voice trailing off as a gentle hand reached out to cup his jaw, tilting his head until he was looking straight into Derek's eyes.

"I am."

Stiles blinked at him. "What?'

"I am." Derek repeated. "Fixated. On you."

Stiles froze.

Had Derek really just said...

He couldn't mean...It made no sense.

But he'd _said_ …

All the connections in Stiles' brain were misfiring as he struggled to comprehend Derek's words – words he'd simultaneously dreaded and dreamed of hearing. He shook his head, trying to get his brain back online.

"Bullshit," Stiles blurted, because if there was one constant he could fall back on in times of stress, it was his tendency to poke emotionally charged landmines with a stick. Then a horrible thought struck him, driving ice through his overheated veins. "Wait. Did it just happen? Shit. Did this fight cause it? I know I saved your life a little bit, but that's like…that's what friends do. And you saved my life right back, so we're even. Quits. I didn't mean to trigger anything. I didn't mean to–"

"No," Derek broke in, letting his hand drop from Stiles' jaw as his lips curled up in small, tired smile. "No, it's not new. I've been fixated on you for a while now."

"A while?" Stiles demanded, racing through his memories of the past several weeks for anything out of the ordinary. "Since when?"

"Remember when you stormed into my loft and demanded that I teach you self defense?" Derek asked.

Stiles nodded dumbly, and the alpha continued, "You threw a punch at me."

"You threw me across the room," Stiles said, brushing fingers against his side, tracing the faint scar, a mirror image of the one he'd acquired tonight. His eyes widened as Derek's meaning sank in. "You fixated then?"

Derek nodded.

Stiles sputtered. "But that was over a _year_ ago."

"Yes," Derek agreed.

"But…" Stiles raked his hands through his hair. "I thought it was like throwing a switch. The way Scott explained it, triggering the instinct means you suddenly feel the compulsion to court and protect."

Derek nodded. "It does."

"So why didn't you just–" Stiles made a gesture that was supposed to indicate a werewolf pouncing but ended up looking more like a spastic T-Rex.

Derek shrugged, far too nonchalant for Stiles' comfort. "It wouldn't have worked. You would have said no."

Stiles raised his eyebrows. "I think you are seriously underestimating the power of my teenage hormones."

"No," Derek disagreed. "I'm accurately estimating the power of your suspicious brain."

Stiles snorted, but Derek shook his head and kept talking. "What would you have thought if I had brought you flowers and serenaded you with Barry Manilow a year ago?"

"Barry Manilow?" Stiles asked with a laugh. "That's what you're going with?"

"Stiles," Derek growled, and it always amazed him how much meaning the alpha could layer into a single word.

"Alright, jeez." he said, holding his hands up placatingly. "I would have thought you had the corniest taste in the world."

Derek rolled his eyes. "You would have assumed that I was possessed or under the influence of some kind of wolfsbane or something."

"Ok, yeah, fine, that is probably true... but, I've gotta say, while throwing me across a room might have dispelled any possible concerns about wolfsbane or possession, it wasn't exactly a stellar first step towards a happy, healthy relationship, either." Stiles flailed at Derek, limbs cycling through every gesture they knew, trying to come up with one that could accurately depict the epic incredulity he was feeling. "Maybe it's a werewolf-human culture gap here, but in the land of normal people, bodily heaving someone across your living space does not usually imply romance."

Derek looked uncomfortable. "I may have...overreacted to the instinct."

Stiles bit his tongue, trying to let Derek find the words he was clearly searching for.

"When I've been…attracted to people in the past," Derek said finally, haltingly, eyes fixed on his feet, "it hasn't ended well."

"I...yeah," Stiles agreed weakly, reviewing his mental list of Derek's past partners.

Paige.

Kate Argent.

Ms. Blake.

It was, of course, possible that Derek had dated other people in the long years between the fire and returning to Beacon Hills, that he'd had relationships that ended in a normal breakup – a simple argument or an amicable parting of ways. Still, there was a bit of an ominous pattern given the sample size Stiles knew about. It would be understandable for Derek to be a little gun-shy about romantic entanglements.

Stiles felt his lungs burning, and realized only belatedly that he'd been holding his breath. He exhaled quietly.

Derek closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if to steady himself.

"It's not…easy for me to talk about this." Derek said finally, haltingly, working his jaw like it physically pained him to push the words out. "But I'll try." He took another deep breath. "Fixation is…It's all-consuming. I knew about it, in theory. I'd heard about it when I was a kid, and again from Deaton after I became an alpha. But actually experiencing it—"

He broke off, finally looking away from the forest floor and focusing instead on a tree beyond Stiles' left shoulder. "The instinct was so much stronger than anything I'd ever felt before," he said, unknowingly echoing Scott's words. "I wanted you, wanted to protect you more than I'd wanted anything else in my life. It was terrifying."

"So you hadn't fixated on anyone else before?"

Derek gave a whole body flinch at that, as though the thought alone was enough to cause him physical pain. "No," he said firmly, finally meeting Stiles' eyes.

"Ok," Stiles prompted when the silence stretched too long. "If you'd never felt fixation before, then why was it so frightening?"

"I've learned not to trust people I'm attracted to," Derek said, shoulders slumping wearily. "And suddenly I was more than just attracted to you. The feeling was so…so huge, so overwhelmingly powerful..." He cut off, shaking his head, like he was frustrated with the English language and its inability to convey meaning. "People I'd cared so little for in comparison had destroyed my family and tried to murder me and my pack." Derek stopped, swallowed. "If those people could hurt me so badly, what would you be able to do?"

It wasn't a full explanation. Not really. But Stiles was pretty good at extrapolating information, and he knew Derek well enough now to fill in the gaps.

Derek didn't want this. He'd been fighting it for more than a year—a nearly impossible feat if Scott and Deaton were to be believed. But even Derek's iron will couldn't hold out forever, and he was finally giving in to the instinct, finally worn down enough to break.

Stiles felt sick, insides twisting like he'd swallowed a whole nest of live snakes, because the raw emotion behind Derek's words was gutting. And Stiles had been right, though he'd never wanted it confirmed. Fixation was a curse. This was horrible, this feeling of having trapped someone, having taken away their will.

But it would be fine. Stiles would _make_ it ok. Thanks to Scott's warning, he'd had a little time to think about how to frame an honest refusal; to choose which words would release Derek from the prison of his instincts while ensuring he wouldn't hear a lie. Granted, after Deaton's flat denial of the situation, Stiles had basically swept all thoughts of Derek and fixation into the deepest, darkest corner of his mind, so he hadn't exactly worked out the finer points of his plan, but he had a basic idea, the vague outline of what to do.

He could make this right.

He just hadn't realized how much those words would hurt to say.

"It's ok. You don't have to do this. I don't—" Stiles stopped and swallowed, trying to steady himself. "I don't want this…I don't want you," he managed, then, looking down, he wiped a hand under his nose to hide his lips as he breathed, " _Not if you don't want me, too_ " silently into his palm so the audible words would ring true.

There was a long, horrible moment of stillness, and Stiles finally looked up to find Derek just staring at him. Stiles tried braced for anything—for anger or hurt or relief.

Instead, Derek huffed a breath through his nose and leveled Stiles with a look that clearly meant _you idiot_ , and said "I want you, too." Then he reached out and snagged Stiles' shirt and pulled him in.

And _shit_ , it hadn't worked. Stiles wasn't sure if his heartbeat had betrayed him, or if Derek had somehow made out the ghost of his silent words, but either way, this still wasn't over. Stiles closed his eyes, trying to ignore the wrenching feeling in his chest.

"You don't though. Not really." Stiles' voice was ground glass in his throat, but he pushed the words out. "This whole fixation thing...It's so unfair. I don't want you to be forced into this." That much was true at least. Painful, but true. "I know I'm not…Not what you probably want," He laughed a little, high and tense, and leaned back in Derek's embrace far enough that he could gesture to his bicep which definitely didn't do the impressive bowing out thing that Derek's did. "I'm underdeveloped and over-excitable and…"

"Stiles," Derek warned, like the last thing he needed to hear right now was a list of Stiles' many and varied insecurities.

"I just…" Stiles started, still trying to pull away.

"Listen to me," Derek said, as though Stiles had ever been able to do anything else on the few shining occasions when the alpha actually managed to put his thought into words.

Derek wasn't using his words now, though; wasn't using his mouth to speak at all. Instead, he leaned forward and smashed their lips together almost brutally, like he was trying to knock some sense into Stiles with his face.

The kiss was awkward at first, wet and frantic and a little bit painful; but if Derek's intention really had been to sucker-punch Stiles into startled stillness, it was working.

Derek pulled back just far enough to say, "I _do_ want this. I have for months now." He nuzzled the ticklish spot under Stiles' ear, muttered against his skin, "This is more than just some instinct. I'd still be fighting it if that's all it was. But it's not, Stiles. This is _real_." He sighed, air ghosting over Stile's skin. "You're an annoying little shit with the self preservation instincts of a frosted donut. You push all the boundaries and you never seem to know when to give up. Sometimes I think your curiosity is going to get us all killed."

"Geez," Stiles said, voice breaking as Derek nosed at the tender skin of his throat. "You really know how to sweet talk a fella, don't ya?"

"I mean it, Stiles," Derek said. "You're loud and reckless and stubborn and a complete jackass most of the time." Derek buried his face in Stiles' skin, breathed him in. "And you're _exactly_ what I want. What I _need_."

And Stiles felt a startled warmth bloom in his chest at the words. He let out another laugh, this time bubbling and relieved, and looked at Derek with wide eyes. "You mean it," he said, not a question. "You actually want this."

He wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that Derek's insults were what finally convinced him this could be real, but maybe that was a little bit perfect, too, because this was them. This was their rocky, contentious, push-each-other-to-the-breaking-point relationship, and Stiles reeled as Derek growled " _Yes_ ," and surged back in, claiming his mouth.

And maybe they should have gone slow, tested the waters a bit before jumping straight in, but who was Stiles trying to kid? They were both stubborn idiots with no idea how to do things by halves, so of course they'd dive head-first into this, too.

Stiles pressed in, desperate to get closer, aching for the scrape of stubble, the slick slide of Derek's tongue, the raw edge of his teeth. Stiles fisted both hands in Derek's shirt and pulled until he was lying under the alpha, the rough wood of the nemeton's severed trunk under his back and the warm press of Derek's body all along his front.

A low growl echoed through the clearing, sharp and possessive, and Stiles shuddered at the vibration he could feel straight to his bones, and then there was a sharp bite at his neck. It wasn't hard enough to break skin, not with Derek's teeth still blunt and human, but it was hard enough to bruise, to mark, to _claim_.

Derek froze, like he'd just realized what he'd done. He pulled back a little, muttering a low apology, like he thought somehow he'd gone too far, like this rough, animalistic side of him might be too much.

"No, it's fine," Stiles panted, pulling him back in, heat coiling low at the base of his spine, radiating out in bright, shocky waves. "I–" Stiles swallowed and tried again. "I like it."

Derek's answering grin was appropriately wolfish, and he dove back in, all slick warmth and urgent pressure, and Stiles gave a low, guttural groan that he would probably be embarrassed about later. There wasn't space in his mind for shame right now, though. He didn't have the capacity to think beyond the press of Derek's thigh between his legs, the sweet friction burning him up from the inside. Stiles tipped his head back, exposing his throat again, and Derek settled his teeth back over the sore spot with a satisfied hum.

Stiles pushed into the bite, and felt a shudder run down the whole length of Derek's body, every inch of contact where they were pressed together. He slid his hands over Derek's shoulders, down his sides and had just pushed his fingers under the waistband of Derek's jeans when a shrill tone rang through the air of the clearing, scattering his already lust-fogged thoughts.

"Shit," Stiles cursed, groping beside him to find and silence the hellishly loud alarm.

Derek was already pulling back, though, pulling away, and Stiles gave a very undignified whine at the sudden lack of contact.

"No!" he protested, finally managing to silence the wretched phone. "Come back here. We were—that was amazing and we should really keep doing that, like, right now. I might die if we stop."

"Blue balls never killed anyone," Derek deadpanned, pushing himself upright and stepping away.

"There's a first time for everything," Stiles muttered darkly, propping himself up on his elbows so he could glare more effectively.

Derek snorted. "You want to stop the Nemeton, right?"

"It is remarkable how little I actually care about that right now," Stiles grumbled.

"Come on," Derek said, grabbing Stiles' hand and pulling him into a sitting position. "It's less than five minutes till midnight. Time to get ready for the spell."

Stiles sighed. "Right," He grumbled. "Fine. Let's save the world or whatever. But you're making out with me again when we're done."

"Deal," Derek agreed.

Stiles grudgingly got into position, sitting as close to the center of the Nemeton as he could manage, legs crossed and body relaxed. He pulled out Lydia's translation of the spell and glanced over it again, trying to drag his thoughts away from what was going on in his pants. Or, more accurately, what _wasn't_ going on in his pants, because Derek was a spoilsport.

The translation revealed specific directions for the spell's setup, how to initiate it, and what the results should be, but there was no real description of what would happen during the spell itself, which meant Stiles had no idea what to expect. Apparently all he had to do was say focused and calm and let the power flow through him, which sounded simple enough on the surface, but Stiles was pretty sure that if he looked himself up in a dictionary, "focused" and "calm" would be listed as antonyms.

He fidgeted nervously and glancing at the cell phone's display.

11:59.

Stiles swallowed and tried to center himself, searching for the calm he'd need to channel the Nemeton's power back into the earth. Considering his distractible brain, it would have been hard enough to stay focused on a normal day. Given the insanity of the night, it was basically a hopeless proposition.

His stomach swooped as the cell phone's readout flipped over to 12:00.

"Now," he said, and Derek pricked his palm with a claw and smeared a dark streak of blood on the Nemeton's rough bark.

There was a moment where nothing happened beyond a slight prickle at Stiles' fingertips. An expectant silence fell around the woods like an indrawn breath before a scream, then power ripped through Stiles, a raw storm of energy so strong that the first wave of it punched the air straight out of his lungs. It felt like a damn had burst, and Stiles was standing directly in the path of the oncoming flood. The sheer force of it washed every thought from his head other than the desperate realization that he had as little hope of guiding this torrent as he did of diverting a river with his bare hands. It was too much, too fast, too strong, and Stiles felt the beginnings of panic stirring in his chest.

The power seemed to know where it was going, though, and when Stiles calmed down enough to think beyond the wild force of it, he realized with dawning awe that could actually follow the streams as they poured out, diverging into five even flows that ran straight through the axial points. From there, the power branched further, naturally slotting into an intricate web of energy that pulsed through the earth itself. The web seemed to strengthen as the Nemeton's power rejoined it, reinforcing brittle places and patching frayed ends.

Stiles felt connected to it all, from the insubstantial wisps of clouds in the sky to the sugar-rich sap flowing under the bark of the trees. He stretched with the tendrils of power, burrowing deep into the soil of the preserve, gambling over the stones in burbling brooks, and racing a spotted owl along a whipping wind. He tasted the wordless thoughts of startled fish and the ancient energy of the bedrock buried below his feet, and rushed farther and farther, on and on through metal and stone, skin and sinew, asphalt and trees. The power reached the city beyond the edges of the preserve and some part of Stiles' consciousness passed through the solid, man-made structures that stood in neatly ordered rows along the paved streets. He slid sideways through the sleeping minds of their silent inhabitants, glimpsing hazy dreams, and heard the frantic barking of backyard dogs as he gently ruffled their fur. He sailed further still, into the wilderness beyond the city, the mountainside caves reverberating with the low snores of trolls and the murky depths of lakes where kelpies and merfolk played.

He had no idea how long it lasted or how far he'd gone, but gradually the torrent of power dwindled, like a stream drying under the scorching summer sun. Slowly, Stiles became aware of his body again, the strange smallness of his flesh and the limited confines of his own thoughts.

He shuddered as the last trickle of power flowed into him, bracing for its loss, for the emptiness he knew was coming, but this time, the power didn't leave. The final, miniscule remnants of the Nemeton's force pooled in his chest and wrapped vine-like around the dark seed of his sacrifice, smothering it in layers of heat and light. Stiles took a shuddering breath as the warmth pulsed, then stretched through him, spreading inside his body just as it had spread through the preserve, burning away the tendrils of darkness that had taken root in Stiles' heart. The darkness shriveled and died, the foreign warmth fading with it like a fond memory.

Gasping, Stiles opened his eyes at last and pushed himself jerkily to his feet, staggering away from the powerless stump. He stumbled almost at once and would have fallen if Derek hadn't been there to catch him.

"It's gone," Stiles panted, trying to catch his breath as Derek half-walked, half-carried him to the edge of the clearing and helped him lean against the cool bark of a tree.

"The Nemeton?" Derek asked, gently wiping at Stiles cheeks.

With a start, Stiles realized he was crying, tears streaming hot and wet over his skin, and he gave a little laugh, pushing Derek's hands aside so he could wipe off his own face. "No." He shook his head as Derek shifted his attention, already running his fingers through Stiles' hair, down his neck, over his shoulders and sides, looking, as always, for any signs of injury. Then Stiles processed Derek's words and corrected himself. "I mean yeah, the Nemeton's gone, too. But the darkness, Derek…the darkness in me, from the sacrifice. It's gone."

"Really?" Derek asked, pausing in his inspection long enough to glance up and meet Stiles eyes.

Stiles nodded. "Yeah. The pressure in my chest…I can't feel it anymore." He laughed again, and ridiculously the tears kept flowing, even more than before. He smiled, unable to find the words he needed to explain the relief coursing through him, the sense of an immense weight finally lifting, euphoria expanding to fill the void like helium in a balloon. "I can finally breathe again." He tangled his fingers in Derek's shirt, pulling him forward, needing the solid heat and warmth of the alpha to keep him grounded, sure that without it he'd float right off the floor.

Derek pressed in, arms bracketing Stiles' shoulders and weight settling against him like a welcome anchor.

Stiles skated his palms over the smooth muscle of Derek's back and up his neck. He trailed fingers through the shorn hair at Derek's nape and pulled him forward until he could feel the shape of Derek's smile against his own lips. He shivered as Derek growled and deepened the kiss, rocking their hips together, then pressing a knee between Stiles' legs until he was riding Derek's thigh.

Stiles lost track of time after that, everything a blur of sweet friction, slick kisses, and the searing scrape of stubble and teeth. Stiles' world narrowed to the hot, insistent press of Derek's mouth, the tormenting drag of his fingers, and the sweat-salty tang of his skin.

" _STILES_!"

Stiles blinked as the sound of his own name crashed into his consciousness with all the subtlety of a six car pile-up. With a monumental effort of will, he pulled away from Derek's addictive lips and tried to focus beyond what Derek was doing with his hands. His attempt was almost thwarted when Derek, deprived of Stiles' mouth, ran a tongue down the long column of Stiles' throat, then bit the junction of his neck and shoulder sending a shockwave of pleasure straight to Stiles' groin.

Stiles would have given in to the sensation, but the sound of a throat clearing very nearby made him freeze. Stiles glanced towards the noise and cursed as he caught sight of his father standing a few yards away, looking just this side of homicidal.

Stiles closed his eyes and groaned, letting his head fall back against the trunk of the tree with a thump. Clearly he had done something awful in a past life, because the universe seemed set on cockblocking him at every turn.

With a resigned sigh, Stiles cracked his eyes open to regard his father. Considering his dad's proximity and expression, he'd probably been trying to get their attention for a while, now. And hey, look, Melissa was there, too, standing just behind his dad with a knowing smirk on her face.

"Uh," Stiles said, gently nudging the oblivious werewolf currently sucking what was probably going to be a pretty impressive hickey into Stiles' neck. And what the hell? Derek had super-senses. How had _he_ missed their arrival? Stiles tried again, elbowing him a little harder, and Derek finally grunted and pulled back, glaring at Stiles like he was the one being ridiculous.

"Hi Dad," Stiles said pointedly.

Derek blinked. Then he slowly turned his head and regarded Stiles' father.

"Sheriff," Derek acknowledged, and very carefully removed his hand from Stiles' pants. "Ms. McCall."

"How did you not hear them coming?" Stiles demanded in a pained whisper, frustration and embarrassment warring for his attention as he tried to covertly zip up his fly.

"You're distracting," Derek growled, low enough that Stiles' dad probably couldn't hear. And that statement was simultaneously amazingly good for Stiles ego and bad for his sanity because thanks to Derek's distraction, his dad was still standing _right there_ staring at them.

Derek seemed to notice that, too. He took a small step back, which really wasn't going to help anyone's reputation here considering the state they were both in, but he gamely turned to face the Sheriff anyway, and cleared his throat.

The sheriff ran an assessing eye over both of them, then raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Funny what adrenaline can make you do," he said with the hint of a question in his voice.

Stiles felt his stomach lurch at his dad's words. If Derek was looking for an out, then this was it. Not that he'd seemed particularly averse to Stiles a minute ago, but Stiles was still struggling with the idea that Derek could actually want him, waiting for Derek to realize how much better he could do. And now his dad had just offered Derek a perfect excuse for his behavior, all neatly packaged and wrapped in a bow. If he wanted a way to escape the situation, to escape _Stiles_ … well, there wasn't going to be a better opportunity than that.

Stiles waited for him to step away or put distance between them. Instead, Derek reached back blindly, and took hold of Stiles' hand.

"No, sir," Derek's voice was steady, though his grip on Stiles' hand was nearly bruising. "Adrenaline had nothing to do with this."

Stiles let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and squeezed Derek's hand in reply.

"Stiles never picks the easy path does he?" the sheriff asked in a wistful voice, gazing up at the starry night sky, and Stiles felt the same bittersweet ache he did every time that expression crossed his father's face, because he knew exactly who his dad was talking to.

"No, sir," Derek answered, sounding almost fond as he tugged Stiles forward and wrapped an arm around his waist. "He never does."

The sheriff fixed Derek with a steely gaze for a long moment, then gave a little shrug, like he'd come to some sort of decision. "At this point, son, I think you'd better call me Noah."

Derek froze at that, but before he could respond, another van pulled up, and Lydia and Jackson piled out.

Stiles shifted, wondering if he should step away from Derek. There were already enough things going on tonight without adding a new layer to the complex dance of pack dynamics. And really, Stiles wasn't even sure what all this meant beyond the fact that apparently Derek wasn't averse to kissing him. He moved to put some space between them, but Derek's hand tightened on his hip, pulling him in even closer.

Jackson caught sight of the movement and let out a long-suffering sigh. " _Finally_. Thank god. Now maybe you'll both stop smelling like angst and sexual frustration."

Lydia elbowed her boyfriend to shut him up, and beamed at Stiles and Derek. "Now they'll just smell like sex," she quipped, then noticed Stiles dad's expression and gave him a pitying pat on the back. "Sorry Sheriff."

Stiles groaned and buried his face in his hands as two more vans pulled up, disgorging Chris, Danny, Allison, and Isaac.

As soon as he spotted Derek and Stiles, Isaac grinned and turned to Allison with a smug expression. "Pay up."

She glanced at his extended hand, then back over at Stiles and Derek, and cursed, reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a wallet.

"Wait a second," Stiles glared, scandalized, as Allison handed Isaac a twenty. "You bet on us getting together?"

Danny arched an incredulous eyebrow at Allison. "You bet against this? Are you blind?"

"No." She gave a resigned shrug. "I bet they'd get together by the end of junior year. It's not my fault they're incompetent at communicating."

"Junior year?" Stiles yelped, straightening. "What the hell. We weren't even—" He cut off as Derek covered his mouth with his hand, smothering his words. Stiles gave him an indignant glare, then licked his palm in retribution.

"We can talk about this later," Derek declared, ignoring Stiles' attempts to bite him. "We've got other things to worry about now."

The last van pulled into the clearing, and Scott and Kira got out.

"It worked!" Scott cheered, running towards the group like the overenthusiastic puppy he was. "It's gone! The nemeton's seed of darkness is gone! I can't feel it at all anymore."

"Mine, too," Allison said, her eyes bright as she returned Scott's smile.

Stiles shoved Derek's palm away, and this time, the alpha let him do it. "Yeah," he agreed, "And the Nemeton's power's gone, too. I felt all of it drain away. I think you're right. I think it really did work."

Scott grinned at Stiles, then glanced back at Allison before doing a hugely comical double-take, eyes wide as his gaze jerked back to Derek and Stiles. He raised his eyebrows and Stiles shrugged and gave him a sheepish smile.

"So that's it?" Kira asked, leaning against Scott's side. "We did it? It's over?"

Lydia shook her head. "Not quite. We still haven't broken the stasis spell."

"My guys can come in and sweep the forest," Chris said. "We've got enough extra talismans to send in a full team. I'll have them search for the statue and make sure the Order didn't leave us any more surprises. You should all head home. Get some rest. This has been one hell of a night."

"I could definitely do with some sleep," Allison agreed, leaning against Isaac's shoulder as she muffled a yawn.

"You won't cite us for grand theft auto if we take these vans home, right Sheriff?" Kira asked, gesturing at one of the Order's abandoned vehicles.

"You're safe from the wrath of the law for tonight," Dad conceded with a small smile. "Just drive safe and follow the speed limit on your way home. I'll have to impound them in the morning, though that's going to take a bit of explaining." He turned back to Stiles. "Ready to head home, kiddo?"

Stiles gave a tired nod.

The sheriff met Derek's eyes. "I suppose you're coming home with us?" he asked.

Derek tensed, glancing down at Stiles, then back to his father.

Dad sighed. "Why don't you use the front door tonight? Stiles' window sill is getting a little scuffed from overuse, and I'd rather not call in the painters again this year."

After an uncomfortable beat of silence, Stiles elbowed Derek until he nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Noah," the sheriff insisted, then turned and headed for the van.

Stiles laced his fingers through Derek's and tugged. "Come on," he said. "Let's go home."

The drive was a little awkward.

Stiles slid into the back seat, assuming Derek would sit up front. Instead the alpha had crawled in after him, nudging Stiles over until they were side by side on the van's bench seat.

"Are you afraid of my dad or something?" Stiles asked.

Derek gave a derisive snort. "No."

"Then why…?" Stiles trailed off as Derek leaned further into his space.

"I don't want to stop touching you," Derek answered, running a warm palm over Stiles' thigh.

Stiles' mouth fell open as a blush stole over his cheeks, but before he could reply, his dad had opened the driver's door and slid in. Stiles snapped his jaw closed, and refused to meet Derek's eyes, because this was definitely not a conversation he was willing to have in front of his father.

The sheriff, undeterred by Derek's backseat gambit, started up a conversation as soon as he put the car in drive, and kept up a steady flow of chatter interspersed with the occasional question about sports or movies or food as they made their way slowly through the woods.

Derek, true to his laconic nature, answered in as few words as possible, though he was still being unnervingly polite.

Stiles normally would have done more than his fair share of the talking, but he was still a little overwhelmed by the events of the night, ecstatic and exhausted in equal parts, so a few minutes into the drive, he yawned and let his head fall onto Derek's shoulder. Derek, still apparently focused on his dad's rambling story about something that had happened at the station, wrapped an arm around Stiles' shoulders and held him in close. At least the alpha made a decent pillow, even if he was a bit of an ass.

Sometime later, Stiles blinked his eyes open as the van pulled to a stop, and looked around in confusion when he realized they weren't home.

"Why are we stopping here?" he asked, sitting up and peering around the 24-hour drug store's parking lot.

"You're buying condoms," his dad said, matter-of-factly, putting the van into park.

"What?" Stiles squawked, dropping into appalled consciousness as the words hit him like ice water to the face.

"Don't get me wrong," his dad said, turning off the engine, and meeting Stiles' eyes in the rearview mirror. "I do not want to know what you two are getting up to. Ever. But I do want to know that you're safe." His gaze shifted from Stiles to Derek. "Both of you."

"W-What?" Stiles sputtered again, but Derek just gave the sheriff a solemn nod.

"Yes, sir," he said and opened the door. The traitor.

Stiles scooted out after him, because it was that or sit in the car with his dad while trying not to think about Derek shopping for condoms, and that was not going to happen.

Granted, actually going _with_ Derek to shop for condoms wasn't much of an improvement, but anything beat enduring another minute of the knowing look on the Sheriff's face.

Stiles followed Derek silently up and down the aisles until he stopped in front of a wall of small, square boxes.

"Oh my god," Stiles breathed. "There are so many kinds." Derek ignored him, scanning the shelves, so Stiles reached out to snag a luridly pink box. "They have bubblegum flavored ones?"

Derek made a face and pulled the box out of Stiles' hand. "We are not getting those," he said as he set them back on the shelf with finality.

Undaunted, Stiles pulled down a shiny silver pack. "What about these?"

"No." Derek glared at him.

"Not even for science?"

Derek closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, like Stiles was causing him physical pain. "While I would be thrilled to discuss your apparent interest in experimentation at some point in the near future," Derek said through clenched teeth, "I refuse to get back into a car driven by your father with a package of anything that's marked 'ribbed for her pleasure.'"

"Fair point," Stiles conceded, and let Derek pick out a nondescript black box before following him to the register.

If Stiles thought that it had been awkward sitting in the van with his dad and Derek before, it was nothing compared to sitting in the van with his dad, Derek, and a box of condoms, even if those condoms weren't ribbed for anyone's pleasure.

Stiles had never been so grateful for anything in his life as he was for the fact that his house was only a three minute drive from CVS. Those three minutes still felt like an eternity, though, and by the time they pulled into the driveway at home, Stiles' knee was jiggling up and down with nervous energy.

His dad unlocked the front door, and let them in. "I'm taking a shower," he announced. "I expect to see you both at the breakfast table tomorrow morning by nine. Until then, I will be wearing earplugs and completely ignoring your existence."

" _Dad_!" Stiles yelped, horrified. Derek's ears turned bright red.

"Have a good night," his father said with a smirk, and because he was a heartless bastard intent on sending Stiles to an early grave, he added, "Try not to break any furniture, please," then turned and headed upstairs.

Stiles glared after him, then rolled his eyes. "My dad, ladies and gentlemen," he said, with a grand showman's gesture towards his father's retreating back.

Derek huffed a short laugh. "I can see the family resemblance," he said, lips quirked in a small smile. "You're lucky. He really loves you."

"Yeah," Stiles sighed. "He's a bit of an ass, but I love him, too."

He turned back to Derek, suddenly unsure.

In the middle of the forest, with magic crackling through the air and the threat of imminent death hovering over them, everything had felt so raw and real. But now, surrounded by normality, in the middle of Stiles' living room with his math textbook on the coffee table and the gnawed stub of a pencil resting on the lid of his laptop, everything seemed somehow less certain. Doubt crept back in, and Stiles swallowed, trying to calm the kamikaze butterflies suddenly hurtling around his stomach.

"Are you really sure about this?" he asked, mouth dry, because despite Derek's earlier assurances, a large part of him still thought this was all too good to be true.

"Yes." Derek answered simply. He tipped Stiles' head up with a gentle finger under his chin, and met his eyes with a searching gaze. Whatever he saw there must have prompted him to go on. "It's not because of the instinct, Stiles. It's because of you. You're honest and loyal and smart. There have been times when you've been the only reason I stayed in Beacon Hills. You're the best thing that could have happened to me and to my pack, and I'm in love with you."

Stiles stared, breath punched out of him, and blinked wordlessly at Derek.

"So yeah," Derek swallowed, and glanced away. "I'm sure. Are you? Do you want this?"

The intensity in Derek's eyes when he looked back at Stiles hit him like a blow to the gut. And this was it, Stiles realized, the response that would cement Derek's fixation or break it. And he realized he didn't have to think about his answer at all.

"Yes," he said, because it was true. "I want this. I want you. I'm…I'm pretty much hopelessly in love with you, too."

And then Derek was kissing him, all slick heat and rough stubble, and Stiles clutched at Derek's shoulders and moaned because he was never, ever going to get enough of this stubborn man and his stupid mouth, but apparently, he had the rest of his life to try.

The clattering rumble of the house's ancient pipes shattered the moment as his dad turned on the shower in the master bath.

Stiles pulled back, breaking the kiss, and leaned his forehead against Derek's to steady himself.

"We should…" he panted, and sucked in a calming breath. "We should probably get cleaned up, too." He gave a rueful grin. "Saving the world is a dirty business, and Dad'll use up all the hot water if we leave it too long. You can have first shower," he offered magnanimously.

Derek grinned. "We could save some water if we showered together."

"Uh," Stiles blinked. "Yeah. That could work."

"Come on," Derek said, tugging him up the stairs towards the bathroom.

By the time the hot water ran out, Stiles was in no shape to notice the cold.

Stiles grinned, relaxed and sated and ridiculously happy. His bed was so much warmer than usual with Derek's arms wrapped around him, their legs tangled lazily together. Stiles felt boneless, melting into Derek's space as the alpha ran a fond hand up and down the bare skin of his back.

It wasn't the first time they'd been this close. Far from it. Between Derek's general propensity for slamming Stiles against walls and actual life-or-death situations requiring bodily proximity, they'd been colliding with each other in one way or another for years. Their training sessions had only increased the time they spent in each other's space, rolling and wrestling and pinning one another to the floor. It wasn't even the first time they'd been pressed together like this in bed, Stiles realized, thoughts flashing back to all the awkwardness and bloodshed of the night of the gnome attack.

But this was different. There was no nagging stress, no guilt, no panic or shame. There was only the pleasant feel of loose muscles, and the warm, persistent ache of happiness deep in Stiles' chest.

"You smell amazing," Derek rumbled, dragging his nose along Stiles' jaw.

Stiles gave a little laugh. "What do I smell like? Horny teenager?"

Derek rumbled low in his chest, and Stiles felt the vibration more than heard the sound. "You smell like pack. Like home. Like _you_."

Stiles shivered at the rough undertone in Derek's voice, all heat and longing. "Good to know that eau de Stiles does it for you," he said, his own voice a little unsteady. He bit his lip, then smiled as another thought occurred to him. "Hey, wasn't I supposed to get some sort of wooing out of this fixation thing?"

Derek raised an eyebrow. "Wooing?"

"Yeah, you know. Like candy hearts and flowers and impractically large stuffed bears. Wooing."

Derek gave him a flat look, then tried to smother him with a pillow.

Stiles yelped and flailed, pushing the pillow away, and Derek leaned in and kissed him, hot and deep. By the time they settled down again, they were both a little sweaty and more than a little sticky and Stiles couldn't quite manage to stop smiling.

"Ok." he panted into Derek's shoulder. "Consider me wooed."

Derek leaned across him, grabbed his t-shirt off the floor, and mopped up most of the mess before tossing the wadded fabric across the room.

Stiles rolled over and pressed his back to Derek's chest, tugging one of the alpha's arms around his ribs with a contented sigh. His gaze caught on the CVS bag on his desk and he huffed a little laugh.

"After all that, we didn't even use the condoms. Not that we needed to. I mean, blow jobs and hand jobs don't usually require…"

Derek bit the nape of his neck, and Stiles trailed off, losing his train of thought. As silencing techniques went, it was pretty effective.

"Next time," Derek murmured against Stiles' skin, voice rich with promise.

"Yeah," Stiles agreed, "Next time." He tugged Derek even closer before falling into a blissful sleep.


End file.
